A high-pitched, melodic giggle erupted from that blackened pit, the sound of a young girl's mirth laced with the poison of a demonic curse.
"Tee-hee-hee!" She drifted closer, covering her maw with a delicate, affected grace. "You really shouldn't have interrupted my dinner, darling..." the Raffbloom Queen purred, her voice a seductive caress amidst the rot.
The creature spoke in the common tongue of Laurasia. Her voice bore the cadences of a young girl, saturated with a heavy, seductive allure. High-tier demons were typically capable of human speech; indeed, many could converse with unnerving fluency. Yet, setting aside his encounter with the Piperclown at the circus gates, this was the first time a fiend had engaged Seraph in a dialogue that so closely mimicked the natural rapport of man.
"You... you possess the gift of speech?" Seraph exclaimed, his voice laced with sheer disbelief.
It was clear now—the Jackblooms had been nothing more than bait, lures designed to lead him into the Queen's own meticulously laid snare. Beyond the disturbing fact that they possessed the strategic intellect to outmanoeuvre a human, the realization that a species birthed a mere few months prior had already mastered language was staggering.
"I am but a lonely girl, awaiting her beloved to call upon her at home... of course I must speak," the Raffbloom Queen purred, her melodic giggle rippling through the stagnant air. "Otherwise, how could I possibly converse with the lover I've been watching so intently all this time?"
"Hmph... my apologies, but my tastes don't quite align with demonic standards," Seraph interjected, an acerbic edge to his tone. "Regrettably, I will never be your paramour. I have a particular distaste for stalkers who lure their prey into putrid bogs to serve as a midnight snack. One doesn't call that being a 'lonely girl'... we call that being a 'pathological deviant'." He let out a dry, mocking laugh while flicking a mote of dust from his pristine white cloak.
"And as for your Laurasian," he continued, a predatory smirk tugging at his lips, "the accent is intelligible enough, though your affectation is a bit too theatrical for a human, milady. If you truly wish to seduce me... next time, do try to select a perfume that doesn't reek of a corpse marinating in a cesspool. As it stands, I am struggling quite manfully to suppress my gorge."
"You are a remarkably discourteous young man, are you not? You differ vastly from the portrait I had painted in my mind," the Raffbloom Queen remarked, her tone curdling with dissatisfaction.
Her voice remained saccharine, yet the underlying resonance was enough to jolt Seraph's instincts, sending a sharp, icy tremor down his spine.
"Discourteous? Hmph! That is perhaps the most benevolent compliment I have ever had the pleasure of receiving," Seraph uttered with a dry, guttural chuckle, feigning indifference even as his primal senses shrieked of the encroaching peril.
"My assessment appears to be well-founded… for even now, you have failed to offer your name," the Raffbloom Queen continued, her voice lilting with a feigned, expectant innocence. "Allow me, then, to observe the social graces first. I am Princess Bloomy, Sovereign of the Raffblooms. And you are…?"
"Why persist with these inquiries? We both understand with absolute clarity that what follows is a struggle to the death… there is nothing between us but the blood of enemies!" Seraph's cold, mirthless laughter echoed through the vault, underscored by the hum of his mounting mageia. "You surely did not orchestrate this snare under the delusion that I was truly your paramour? The notion is as farcical as it is wretched. Heh… heh…"
The young man held Princess Bloomy's gaze with a frigid stare, refusing to yield his name; he saw no honour in granting such a courtesy to a fiend. He stood as rigid as a spear, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the Rubyflame Sceptre. His mageia aura flared—a defiant beacon against the encroaching gloom. Within the lightless dome, only the brilliant pulse of his power stood against the suffocating horror of the dark.
The hundred blades fanned out in a bristling perimeter, their keen tips angled outward like the wings of a predatory guardian poised to defend its master to the last.
Seraph had never harboured the slightest inclination for rapport with the demonic horde...
Not for a fiend capable of eloquent speech and sophisticated discourse...
Nor for any creature, regardless of how exquisite its visage or how ostensibly benign its spirit.
The total annihilation of the Demon Legion—purging their filth from the soil of Laurasia—was the solitary, unwavering mandate he had pursued and would champion for all eternity, to the exclusion of all else.
He understood with clinical clarity that this encounter could only end in a ferocious struggle; on this day, either he or Princess Bloomy would meet their end upon the Darkwood floor. His verbal parrying was merely a calculated gambit to extract intelligence; thus, he viewed the exchange of introductions as a farcical vanity, utterly devoid of necessity.
The young man's gaze held nothing but a piercing frigidness. In response, Princess Bloomy merely tilted her head in feigned curiosity, while the three hundred high-tier Flora Demons stood in a chilling, statuesque stillness—puppets of a singular, mindless will.
"Your reactions are so vastly different from my imaginings… I begin to wonder if you treat the girls in your own world with such callous disregard for their hearts," Princess Bloomy remarked, her tone lilting with the affected pout of a slighted maiden.
"Do not overstep your bounds!" Seraph interjected, his voice as cold and sharp as a winter blade.
The magis was often perceived as oblivious to the romantic overtures directed his way, yet he was far from ignorant of the kindness many young women showed him. Since his ascension in strength, several enchantresses within Sanctus—those who had previously spared him no glance—had begun to seek his proximity with unmistakable intent.
That Seraph refrained from overt displays of emotion did not imply indifference to the feelings of the women around him. Unbeknownst to himself, the well-being of certain individuals had already become the most sacred priority of his life.
In the past, Sophia had frequently teased him in a similar fashion whenever he affected a heart of stone; yet the context between the starlet and Princess Bloomy was as disparate as heaven and the abyss. The actress's barbs were forged of playful mischief, intended merely to needle those around her for sport.
Conversely, the Queen's words carried a lethal undertone—a direct threat to every woman who held a place in his life. She was not merely conversing; she was treading upon the dragon's inverted scale, a deliberate provocation intended to incite his absolute fury.
"Well, well, well… you truly must learn to speak with more melodic grace if you harbour any hope of shielding those two or three little paramours of yours… Lord Seraph," Princess Bloomy crooned, the venom in her voice as unmistakable as the stench of the bog.
"You… how in the name of the abyss do you know my name?!" Seraph's frame seized with a jarring shock.
The young man remained acutely aware of his predicament—ensnared within the thorns of the dome, a solitary soul amidst a three-hundred-strong host without a single ally to take the field.