At that moment, Mordant stood like a monolith atop a jagged outcrop, his silence a blunt refusal to acknowledge the clamour.
"Silence, the lot of you! Muster at once!" Dant's voice, amplified by mageia, thundered through the derelict village.
Upon hearing that absolute mandate, the majority of the aspirants obeyed without protest. They swarmed back to face Mordant in unison, for in this godforsaken reach, only the airship looming behind the Captain offered a path back to the Arkflame they'd left behind.
Thus, they were bound to his word without recourse. Yet, amidst the thousand-strong throng, whispers began to circulate—calculating strategies to overcome the Raffbloom mission, interspersed with fierce vows to seize the primary rank.
"Lend me your ears and mark them well! For if you fail to do so, these may be the last pleasantries you ever afford to hear!" Mordant began, his tone dripping with clinical frost.
As he spoke, his piercing gaze swept past the crowd, fixing upon the hollow, silent husks of the dwellings behind them.
"Do you see the abandoned hamlet at your backs? Every soul among the woodfolk has vanished without a trace... As per the intelligence I've provided, they've been swallowed by an enigma. All gone."
He emphasised each string of words with a clinical, biting frost.
"No sign of structural ruin...
No property plundered...
No scent of gore...
No fallen corpses...
No trace of predation by any beast...
Not even a whisper of a demon ever setting foot within these bounds..."
Dant narrowed his eyes, a fleeting fracture in his composure appearing for a mere heartbeat before he masked it behind a veil of iron resolve.
"Every hamlet within the Darkwood and along this frontier has been transmuted into a hollow sepulchre overnight!"
A ripple of perplexed murmurs rose from the throng, but Mordant hoisted a hand—a silent mandate that severed the noise instantly.
"The objective of your primary rank! You are to unearth the truth of this 'Raffbloom'—the cryptic name uttered by the solitary sentry who escaped these timbers alive!"
He paused, letting the weight of the mystery settle before adding his supplementary charge.
"And your secondary task... you are to recover the vanished woodfolk! Should they yet draw breath, you are to secure them and relay their coordinates to the wardens. If you find nothing but cold remains, you are—I mean—you are bound to report that as well!"
This time, the murmurs were heavier, a spreading rot of dread gnawing at the collective heart of the host.
"Whatever enigma festers within this Darkwood... I demand the answer from your steel!" Mordant thundered.
He flicked a finger toward the shadow treeline encircling them, which at this moment stood with an unnatural, suffocating stillness.
"From this breath forth, disperse! Scour the terrain for the abnormal, scrutinise every shadow, and put to the sword anything that dares threaten the race of man! Report your findings without fail!"
The mandate concluded, leaving a tapestry of hesitation and naked anxiety etched upon the countenances of the aspirants.
"And for those harboured by thoughts of a premature withdrawal..." Mordant spoke, his eyes narrowing into predatory slits. His voice carried a crushing weight of pressure that caused several hunters to blanch instantly.
The Captain Mordant of Arkflame curled his lip into a ruthless sneer, finally unsheathing his true iron nature.
"From the very breath you submitted your petitions and bound your names to this Bloody Hunting... you were well apprised of the absolute covenant: 'No soul is permitted to withdraw until the entirety of the consecutive missions is complete!'"
He hammered home every syllable with a resonance that quelled all movement.
"Any who flee! You'll be deemed as having desecrated the laws of Arkflame! Retribution will hound you to the ends of the earth! Mark this well... desertion mid-mission carries a penalty equivalent to treason upon a demonic battlefield!" Mordant roared, the sound rebounding through the hollows of the Darkwood.
[Echo—Boom!]
A sudden, suffocating silence claimed the thousand-strong host. The hunters who'd previously indulged in hubris and hollow boasts now grasped the grim reality of the abattoir they'd stepped into of their own volition.
"This is no arena for suckling babes! This is a literal theatre of war!" Mordant emphasised one final time. "If you persist in viewing this as mere sport—then prepare yourselves. For the Darkwood will gladly serve as your sepulchre in place of the vanished wretches you seek!"
"Aspirants of the tenth airship—commence the first rank of the Bloody Hunting... now!"
As Mordant turned his back to re-ascend the tenth airship, a frantic shout pierced the air from the thick of the aspirants.
"Wait! Sir Mordant! What of the hunters from the other vessels? Where are we to rendezvous with them?"
As the question hung in the air, a thousand pairs of eyes locked onto Mordant as one. Every soul present pressed for the answer that had festered in their minds since the onset.
"I have not forbidden you from forming cabals..." Mordant spoke, his lips curling into a predatory leer.
"I've not forbidden you from forming cabals," Mordant spoke, his lips curling into a predatory leer.
"If you wish to bolster your ranks with hunters from the other vessels, it constitutes no breach of protocol. However... you must scour the disparate corners of the Darkwood and unearth your comrades by your own hand. I'll offer you this small insight: though this timber may not appear vast, it spans a territory larger than a mid-sized metropolis. I can only pray the Goddess of Fate deigns to look upon you with favour!"
With those parting words, Mordant turned and strode back into the bowels of the airship without so much as a backward glance at the thousand souls below.
[Whirr—vrooom!]
In a heartbeat, the titanic vessel surged toward the heavens, abandoning them in the heart of the Darkwood like hatchlings cast from the nest into the wild without mercy.
The thousand-strong host of hunters exchanged glances of bewilderment laced with burgeoning dread. Yet, they did not remain idle for long. In truth, the majority of the aspirants harboured little regard for Dant's hollow rhetoric. Many had already begun to disperse, their ranks splintering into the inky timber to commence their own objectives.
Seraph had played no part in the throng huddled before Dant's proclamation. Though he'd refrained from manifesting among the loyalist ranks, his mageia ensured every syllable reached him with crystalline clarity from across the derelict hamlet.
While Mordant had been weaving his tapestry of tedious rhetoric, Seraph had already scoured the village to its very bones. He'd arrived at a singular, chilling conclusion: there wasn't a flicker of life within these bounds. Not a head of livestock remained, nor could a solitary insect be found. Yet, the chattels and implements within every dwelling remained undisturbed, as if the inhabitants had merely stepped out for a heartbeat and vanished into the ether.
The evidence only served to sharpen his burgeoning dread. With a decisive surge, he propelled himself toward the heart of the Darkwood, forsaking the hollow village without a backward glance.
As Seraph was cresting the blackened canopy to vanish into the deep timber, a frantic cry caught his heels.