Suddenly, a spectral orange luminescence flared from the heart of the miasma. The light lanced into Seraph's gaze with jarring intensity. Instantly, a crushing pressure clamped upon his psyche—as if his very mind were being seized by the agonising talons of a demonic curse.
Obsidian silhouettes lunged across the Greatwood crowns, surging toward the human with the velocity of a lightning strike. Four-bladed leaves were levelled with predatory intent, aimed squarely at the magis's heart; the vibration at the tips of their weapons betrayed a singular, frantic resolve to slaughter. Such was the nature of the demonic horde. Hope was a saccharine draught to them; the mere imagination of rending the flesh of the adversary they loathed most caused a foul slaver to drench their maws.
The young man was besieged by a staggering migraine. His vision blurred into a chaotic haze, yet he thrust his hand toward the encroaching gloom to issue his mandate.
"Obliterate!" Seraph roared through gritted teeth.
A violent gale erupted, and the legion of flying blades surged through the firmament with unrestrained aggression. The collective resonance of the mageia-armada was terrifying—a high-pitched shriek that seemed to tear the very fabric of the sky. Yet, that was merely the herald of a strike destined to haunt the foe until their final breath.
The incandescent blades lanced through the shadows, detonating the Jackblooms first. The pumpkin-heads erupted with a visceral splat! The demonic miasma they had employed as a shroud was forcibly dispersed by the mageia-pulses layered upon the steel. The authority of the offensive spell was absolute and clinical.
'The Third Law of the Magis... Superior mageia power dictates the victor!'
To overcome a more potent mageia required either profound stratagem or intricate planning. Yet, should one find themselves outmatched in both intellect and raw mageia, their life-thread was already severed.
As the Jackblooms were systematically detonated, the crushing migraine besieging Seraph's psyche began to ebb. His airborne legion lanced through the pumpkin-entities with effortless lethality, navigating the void like miniature, sentient airships. The flamus aura layered upon the steel provided an incandescent, searing heat, while the ventus enchantment bolstered their celerity and predatory grace.
Once infused with these composite auras, the blades dispersed to skewer every Raffbloom in the vicinity, passing through their hides as if they were nothing but silk. The violent rupturing of the pumpkin-heads was indistinguishable from the bursting of brittle glass amidst a shower of sparks.
Dozens of the illusory demons were reduced to pulp in a rapid, visceral chain reaction. To Seraph, the staccato report of the explosions resonated like a sublime orchestral crescendo, yet to the floral host, it was a waking nightmare of absolute ruin.
The armada of blades carved through the ravine in a relentless, scouring orbit. They were entities of cold, impartial justice; whether Timberaxe, Nightshade, or Jackbloom—even the ancient timber itself—any substance obstructing their path was met with the same unbridled savagery. They dispensed their silent judgment with a merciless equality.
The whistle of mageia-tempered steel slicing the firmament harmonised with the high-pitched lamentations of the swarm. Despite the slaughter, the demons' blade-leaves and axes continued to strike at the young magis with desperate, unyielding defiance. The struggle persisted for several gruelling hours, the atmosphere thick with the scent of char and rot.
The tally of the slain surged from dozens to hundreds with a velocity that left the demonic horde unable to mount a cohesive defence. The engagement had devolved into a unilateral massacre. Though the demons were a lineage that refused to succumb easily, the sheer magnitude of their losses had finally brought them to the precipice of collapse.
In the weeks prior, the Raffbloom numbers had steadily withered, and the daily count of Seraph's culls had seen a disheartening decline. Yet today, he had managed to achieve a figure that was, by any measure, profoundly impressive.
'By my rudimentary calculations... the swarm should have withered to fewer than three hundred by now—perhaps even less, if they possessed the wit to concede. If this melody of destruction maintains its gratifying tempo, I will conclude this initial rank and return to the pleasures of a fresh grimoire before the sun has even thought to set,' Seraph mused, a cold satisfaction settling within him.
The young man analysed the carnage as he observed the fray. In a mere interval, the ravine—once choked with suffocating demonic miasma—had been scoured clean by his airborne legion. This was annihilation in its purest form; every Flora Demon was stripped of any chance of defiance. This was the quintessence of what the Bloody Hunting should have been from the very outset.
Yet, amidst the deepening shadows, a silhouette—no larger than a metre—clung to the reverse slope of a low ridge. Fortune favoured the craven, as a cluster of desiccated Greatwoods obscured the line of sight, ensuring no mageia-blade detected the skulking presence. Unseen and unhurried, the entity began to drift away with laboured vigilance. It moved with a ghostly silence, as if desperate not to stir a single mote of the atmosphere, lest the very winds betray its departure to the magis.
The young man descended from the firmament, his boots meeting a high branch as he stood with unnerving stillness. He remained at the eye of this frantic theatre of war.
The final handful of Timberaxes and Nightshades continued to whirl their weapons as makeshift bulwarks, brandishing their steel with a desperate resolve—as if they refused to draw their final breath upon this soil. Their guttural war-cries and the clash of steel resonated through the night, a haunting refrain typical of the demonic battlefield.
The legion of a hundred blades persisted in their coordinated assault, rending the forms of the remaining Raffblooms asunder, indifferent to their harrowing lamentations.
Several clusters of the mageia-armaments struck with cold-blooded ferocity, tearing every appendage into jagged fragments. The shrieks of the dying vibrated through the pyre-clouds; these enchanted knives conducted themselves with a bloodlust that eclipsed any natural predator.
Yet, from the periphery of his vision, the young man's gaze remained fixed upon the bulbous silhouette drifting silently into the shadow depths.
'The stratagem proves infallible once more...' Seraph mused, a faint, predatory smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
✧ . ✶ . ❂ . ✶ . ✧
Once... amidst the lightless corridors of the Greatwood, a solitary amber glow flickered—a diminutive spark resembling a lost, lonely child wandering through the horrors of the Darkwood.
It shuddered with fear. It drifted forward with a laboured gait, constantly glancing at the shadows to discern if any intruder pursued its retreat.
Flanking its path were vast, perilous stretches of toxic slough. Mists of demonic miasma spiralled toward the canopy, while the forest was choked with the desiccated husks of timber that inspired nothing but profound melancholy. The mountain gales whistling through the deadwood birthed a harrowing wail, reminiscent of souls mourning their former lives.
The skeletal trees loomed like the very gates of the abyss. Seraph glided in pursuit from a calculated distance, trailing the Jackbloom since the very inception of the skirmish. The pumpkin-demon drifted ahead, solitary and sluggish, rendering the journey a tedious, protracted affair.