The floor lurched violently as the flesh of the ship suddenly spasmed. A psychic scream tore through every corridor and hallway of the undead dreadnought, followed quickly by a rumbling shockwave that made the very bones of the floor shudder.Somewhere deep within the dreadnought, a bomb had gone off — Eri’s Hellbomb, delivered by his shadow to drown the ship’s heart in infernal fire.That was the sign Eri had been waiting for. More than the sudden turbulence or the agonised roar of the undead vessel, the abrupt death of the Despoiled Canticle’s dark pulse was impossible to miss.The unrelenting heartbeat of the vessel was disrupted. The necromantic magic that had suffused the laboratory’s very walls stuttered and died, its mana guttering like a windblown candle. Every undead in the chamber froze. Like marionettes whose strings had been severed mid-motion, they went limp. One of the undead Penitent Knights dropped its halberd, witchlight flickering uncertainly in its skull. Another’s body twitched, then completely collapsed as a cascade of arcana failure caused its flesh and bone armour to slough off.Even Oleander himself — proud Pirate Lord who hailed from a race millennia extinct — staggered as his ever-constant connection to the dreadnought was severed.Just a split-second display of weakness. One hand braced against the operating slab as his breath hitched, a thin spray of white dust escaping his lips. The light in his eyes went dim.It was all Eri needed.The dagger was already in his hand (...)