The West was not always a pirate-infested pit.

  True, the situation in those seas was never truly ideal. Lawlessness ran rampant even before the Great Collapse, a hundred years before, and most manner of debauchery had still been enjoyed — even legally permitted in some cases.

  Yet it was not utter anarchy. Empire-sanctioned governors were in place, the Imperial Administration maintained a considerable presence (though of somewhat questionable loyalty), and the Church curbed the worst of human impulses, preventing the archipelago pseudo-kingdom from spiralling completely into degeneracy and sin.

  Then, the Great Collapse came. The Empire became weakened. The pirates and greedy local nobles saw their chance and launched a coup. The Slaver Isles were thus born.

  All four cardinal points of the continent held a stronghold capital. It was typically a source of imperial strength and ancient Elder magic. The North had the fortress of Kaldreach. The West had a massive mobile shipyard once hailed as Ertinsa.

  Few remember it by that name anymore. Most knew it as the Iron Cage, the capital flagship of Pirate Lord Baroque.

  It was an utterly massive construct, one that drove architects mad to comprehend. Kaldreach was a fortress citadel capable of comfortably housing, feeding, and supplying a force of over a hundred thousand. The Iron Cage did not lack in that regard.

  Less a ship and more a city torn from the sea’s depths and hammered into motion by Old Magic, the massive shipyard drifts across the oceans of the West as a moving citadel. Its vast decks bristled with industrial arcanotect: advanced crane systems, drydocks, foundries, and spires belching black smoke into the sky. Beneath its armoured hull churned a labyrinth of engines — colossal furnaces and rune-etched turbines that consume both coal and captured magic from Hellgate Cores to keep the monstrosity afloat.

  From above, the Cage resembled a sprawling island of iron: concentric rings of shipyards and factories surrounding a central citadel where Pirate Lord Baroque and his council of bloodthirty admirals ruled. The outer rings house the largest dockyards of the West — the only place where the larger classes of arcane pirate warships, such as frigates and galleons, were still born. Hundreds of smaller vessels swarm around it at all times, ferrying ship materials, mana cores, and slaves from conquered shores.

  Within its bulk lived nearly a hundred thousand souls — sailors, smiths, artificers, engineers, merchants, and generations of slave families who have never once set foot on land. Entire districts rose in tiers upon the massive hull: armouries hanging over the rails, taverns built into gun decks, ancient temples repurposed into cannon housings. Smoke and steam were the Iron Cage’s breath, the clang of hammers and the hiss of molten metal its heartbeat.

  It was widely deemed conventionally unassailable. If one somehow managed to evade the massive fleet surrounding the shipyard-dreadnought at all times, then its gun batteries would destroy them. Chains as wide as bridges can be cast to block off passageways or pull smaller vessels into their drydocks. And, as a final measure, beneath the waves closest to the Iron Cage’s heart, a mechanical leviathan of Baroque’s design — a submersible, monstrous thing of brass and magic — patrolled its shadow.

  Under Lord Baroque’s indomitable might, the section of the Slaver Isles where he controlled became a pirate’s paradise. Once a series of legitimate imperial ports, it was now a chain of lawless and fortified island cities situated in the southernmost corner of the Slaver Isles. The region was often called the Ring of Corsairs — the heart of the Slaver Isles, and the Pirate Capital of the World. It was a place which embodied everything the West stood for: a decadent den where gold, goods, blood, and, of course, slaves flowed in equal measure.

  Every harbour crammed with ships flying every banner imaginable — desert merchants from the far East, beastfolk smugglers from the South, and the many black-sailed pirate vessels from all four Pirate Lords. Havens for the outcast or the ruthless, the islands were a melting pot of criminals, treasure hunters, information brokers, and pleasure seekers. The cities’ ‘governance’ changed hands regularly, often through assassination, mutiny, or the occasional drunken brawls that escalated into minor civil war. Yet all answered to Pirate Lord Baroque nonetheless, the feared tyrant whose reputation for brutality kept the Ring of Corsairs united — and, at times, even civilised.

  And so, despite the chaos left by the Great Collapse, the West thrived. The markets of the Ring overflowed with plundered goods, exotic reagents, and contraband from every corner of the world. The island’s taverns never closed, its alleys teemed with cutthroats and bounty hunters, and its shipyards prepared mighty vessels for their next raid. Life was cheaper than a mug of rum, and for every gold coin profited from the suffering, a cut of it went to Lord Baroque.

  Indeed, everything was perfect for the Pirate Lord…

  … Until the wolves of the North came, led by the howling of a great beast that even the demons of the Eye learnt to fear.

  ~~~

  A few weeks ago…

  “Explain to me, precisely, how this is possible.”

  Pirate Lord Baroque, self-proclaimed tyrant of corsairs and ruler of the West, stared at the nervous admirals kneeling at the foot of his throne.

  It was a strange and disturbing sight to see so many Jewelled-Core Chosens willingly on their knees — dozens of Ruby-Cores, even a few nascent Sapphires in their mix.

  Their aura, usually terrifying and mighty to behold, quivered before the titan sitting above them.

  Lord Baroque’s Emerald Core reigned supreme.

  “Our ships outnumber theirs three-to-one,” Baroque said calmly. “Our men, five-to-one. If we are to consider Chosens in the Gold or Jewelled Cores, the ratio is nearly ten-to-one. You have the numbers, the strength, and, I hope, the proper motivation to drive these invaders from my lands.”

  Lord Baroque stood from his throne. The admirals struggled not to recoil or whimper.

  The titan lifted his massive warhammer.

  “Someone tell me,” the Pirate Lord said quietly, “how we are losing.”

  The invasion had barely been an inconvenience to him, at first. The northerners were incompetent at navigating the seas. For all their considerable strength, the Kaldreach Coalition was doomed the moment the Duskcrowns managed to unite the four Pirate Lords against them.

  Baroque had still sent his fleets, of course. His corsairs reaped many lives, and the war afforded him valuable Chosen slaves to trade with ghoulish Oleander. After the necromancer’s humiliating defeat in the outer seas, the man had been quite hungry for imperial captives, going so far as to offer payment in Hellgate Cores — a commodity Baroque badly needed to fuel his dreadnought’s industrial might.

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  Even after the Coalition seized the outer seas and began penetrating his territories, Baroque had not been worried. The Ring of Corsairs was well-defended; the local governors valued their riches well enough to ensure their islands were armed and patrolled by ravenous ships. A few might be damaged or lost, but such ‘defeats’ bred a need for Baroque’s protection, and were useful for reminding those in the Ring who truly ruled them. The Pirate Lord had even gone as far as to hold back his personal fleet for a time, thinking to allow the Ring to suffer the first strike and bloody the foe before he swept in as a conquering tyrant.

  That proved to be a mistake.

  The Ring fell too fast. It was not a matter of resistance — the local pirates were weak, but plentiful, and with their riches dependent on those islands, they fought hard to protect them. Even if they were doomed to fall, they should have, at the very least, held out for some time.

  The problem was that Baroque had severely underestimated the strength of the invaders sent against him.

  How could he not? A ragtag group of independent Chosens and mercenaries had come for his wealth. Baroque had been insulted that it was not the Nobles Houses of the North he faced, or the legendary Penitent Knights of the Church, or even the Imperial’s precious Hero of the 24th Crusade.

  No, he faced opportunistic dogs and greedy raiders — nothing new, nothing noteworthy.

  Or so he thought. In the end, the entire Ring fell within a month. Most of the islands barely held for a single day once under siege.

  His Pirate Capital — his jewel of the West, half the source of his wealth and power — plundered blind right before his eyes.

  Baroque’s rage had been legendary. Many of his men were executed personally by him following those dark days. To send a message and make up for this humiliating loss, his entire fleet had set out to crush the independent faction.

  A hundred and fifty warships. Thousands of Chosens. Even the Iron Cage had come for the mercenary mongrels.

  Baroque had not expected them to last a month.

  They held on for two years.

  And now… now!

  The independents have managed to infest his dreadnought!

  “My Lord! They have breached the second perimeter!” A corsair lieutenant cried out, huffing breathlessly as he entered the hall. “It’s the Doomhowlers! We can’t repel them! The Infernal Hand is coming, we must flee—”

  The lieutenant never finished. Baroque lifted an open fist in his direction before closing it.

  The pirate’s head caved in like a crushed grape.

  “We are in a meeting,” Baroque said mildly. “Remove that mess.”

  Slaves hurriedly moved to clear the body. Their movements were stiff, however.

  In the distance, a strange howling was heard.

  “Nearly a hundred thousand souls on this shipyard,” Baroque said, staring down the hall. “Chosen corsairs by the thousands. Hundreds of warships patrol these waters. Countless gun batteries of arcane design. Kilometres of steel arranged in a maze between the outer perimeter of the Iron Cage and its heart.”

  Baroque smiled lightly. “And still, a group of twenty mongrels managed to board my ship and are now minutes away from reaching my throne.”

  The Pirate Lord looked to the admirals, still kneeling on the iron floor. “I ask again. How is this possible? Was it your incompetence or your weakness that allowed this insult to be delivered onto my feet?”

  No one dared answer.

  “No,” Baroque sighed. “It is not simply one. You were all incompetent and weak.”

  The Pirate Lord idly swung his warhammer, instantly obliterating one of the kneeling admirals closest to him. Everything above the waist became a bloody swear on the ground.

  “Prepare to repel boarders,” Baroque commanded. The words tasted foreign to him. It was insulting that he ever had to say them. “Those who bring me a Doomhowler’s head, I will spare. Those who do not, I’ll—”

  Baroque paused, then frowned. There was a sudden, strange humming in the air. “What in the world is that noise?”

  It happened in an instant.

  The moment he finished speaking, the space before Baroque howled before it was torn wide open.

  Something large and fast came sprinting out of that broken storm of reality. The iron floors caved in from the sheer weight of its monstrous steps.

  It could not be said to be human.

  The Thing was made of steel — blades grinding against one another, hooks and chains writhing like the limbs of some feral machine. Its snarl was swallowed by the metallic shriek of its own flesh — the wet rasp where meat and metal merged; the protesting whine of steel plate crushing and reforging under the inconceivable rage of its wearer.

  Two Ruby-Core admirals were dead before the first eyeblink passed, reduced to gore and chunks in a blur of feral motion. A Sapphire-Core — one of Baroque's most trusted and powerful Chosen — did not have the time to turn or even get off his knees before the Thing’s massive claws tore him in two.

  The second of surprise passed. Offensive magic and arcane firearms went off. They crashed, boomed, and blasted chunks of steel off the creature.

  It did not slow at all. Another admiral died in the next second, felled in a heartbeat as his head was sent flying by a whirling chain axe. Another tried to parry the follow-up strike, but the immense claw blurred, coming from a blind angle.

  The pirate was slapped aside. He instantly smashed against the walls — twenty metres away — and became nothing more than a stain. Not even a sizeable chunk of flesh or bone was left. He was simply reduced to a bloody, spreading smear that reached the ceiling.

  The Thing reached the Pirate Lord.

  Baroque’s superhuman reflexes could barely keep up. There was nothing of grace or agility in the Thing’s movements. An ungodly beast; a storm of steel whose speed and strength were pushing the absolute limit of physical possibility.

  A creature of its size should not be able to move so fast, so swiftly. There should have been something, anything — inertia, an overheating of its biology, or even just the friction of air alone — slowing it down.

  None of it mattered. It moved at impossible speeds anyway — impossible for even Chosens or Demons in the Jewelled Tiers. His mind rendered dazed by disbelief, Baroque instinctively checked his opponent’s Core.

  Was this creature a Saint? An Archon? Some Mythic-rank monster born from the depths of the Maelstrom?

  But no. Within the Thing, Baroque only sensed a Sapphire Core.

  Its Core was inferior to his, yet he was losing.

  Somehow, the Core was howling.

  Each step it advanced left gouges in the iron floor. Each parry of its spinning blades left Baroque’s arms reeling. It was an avalanche of razors. The Thing didn’t stop — it never stopped. Forms shifting mid-swing, hooks and chains elongating into scything limbs, an unending metallic howl that had drowned every other noise since the portal appeared.

  Baroque’s warhammer shattered. His Gravity Artes could do nothing to slow the creature down at such close range. Baroque said nothing — not because he didn’t want to, but because there was no time to whisper a single word or even open his mouth to scream.

  The Thing’s axe of burning chains didn’t even slow when it went through him. Baroque’s body was cleaved from head to groin. His proud Throne of Iron, the seat of his tyranny, was destroyed behind him in the same blow.

  And then, finally, stillness.

  The Thing stopped moving. The sudden, incomprehensible change from its lightning-blur motions to absolute static shattered the sanity of any remaining corsairs. They watched in a daze, some even still kneeling, as the corpse of their immortal tyrant wetly flopped down the stairs of the throne in two meaty pieces.

  Not even five seconds had passed since the portal opened.

  From the tear in space, several figures came forth. Infinitely more human by far, the Chosens wore the insignia of the Doomhowler Brigade on their shoulders.

  None of the pirates even raised an arm against them. Around twenty of them flooded out of the portal, casually holding runic axes over their shoulders. One of them laughed when he saw the corpse of Lord Baroque.

  “Looks like the job is done. This one any fun, Boss?”

  “It was a piss-poor hunt,” the Thing — known by his men as the Infernal Hand of the Doomhowler Brigade — growled. “Let’s hope the other three ‘Lords’ make for better prey.”