Seraph observed the slow-motion ruin festering among the aspirants with a mask of clinical detachment. Deep within, however, he was acutely aware that he could offer no salvation, for his own reserves were no more bountiful than theirs.
As the young magis's power continued its steady ascension even amidst the Darkwood, the tether between his essence and the natural forces grew preternaturally deep. Now, he no longer perceived the gales as mere faint ribbons of luminescent emerald. He beheld those elemental currents as microscopic life-particles, dancing with a sovereign will of their own. Furthermore, they offered a wellspring of untainted energy to his physical form.
To put it more precisely, the natural forces enveloping Seraph had become a living, breathing reservoir of vitality. He'd learned to siphon them into his frame, replenishing a portion of his spent mageia. Most crucially, this profound communion suppressed his bodily cravings, dulling the edge of hunger to a mere whisper.
He felt now like some primordial whale, capable of inhaling the surrounding plankton to transmute it into constant fuel. The famine that ravaged the others was, for him, no burden at all.
✧ . ✶ . ⛤ . ✶ . ✧
Three days of agonizing thirst and famine had bled away.
The situation had suffered a violent and rapid inversion—a descent into depravity that none could have foreseen before pledging their steel to the Bloody Hunting. After a mere three nights, the provisions of every aspirant had vanished. No matter how cunningly one had secreted their final morsels, they were either plundered by desperate hands or consumed in a fit of ravenous hunger that gnawed at the very marrow. The once-robust physiques of the hunters began to wither with frightening speed.
By design, the victor of the Bloody Hunting was to be a solitary soul; thus, these cabals were nothing but fleeting alliances bound by the frailest of threads. After the third night, those threads snapped. The first instances of fratricide stained the dark—demon hunters began to assassinate their own kin under the shroud of night, driven to butchery for a handful of dry grain.
As this internal slaughter ignited, guarded suspicion curdled into a frigid, pervasive hatred that seeped through the timber. Now, even those sharing the same blood, or lovers who'd sworn eternal fealty, found they could no longer bestow their trust without a blade held in reserve.
Scores of hunters elected to sever themselves from their factions, plunging into the deeper reaches of the Darkwood in a desperate search for quarry or some overlooked hoard. Their instincts proved true; this wilderness held more than the ten villages initial records suggested. Cryptic settlements and remote woodsmen's cabins were scattered throughout the gloom, some still harbouring emergency stores.
Though they found nothing but coarse starches and crude grains, the famished hunters who stumbled upon these hoards wept as if they'd unearthed the crown jewels of Laurasia. Through this grim discovery, the crisis of starvation was held at bay for several days more, even as the grand coalitions splintered into fractured bands—reduced to only those who trusted one another unto death.
✧ . ✶ . ⛤ . ✶ . ✧
The seventh night of torment had descended.
The physiques of the hunters had withered until skin clung to bone, the martial vigour they once boasted having been bled dry by seven days of frantic, futile demon tracking. As the cycle of the dark returned once more, they surrendered to a slumber so profound they resembled nothing but soulless husks.
At the very stroke when the race of man was at its frailest... the hidden fangs of the Darkwood began to slither from their lightless sanctuaries with predatory patience.
Amidst the dead of night, a cryptic mist and a nameless stench of rot began to coil through the timber. The forest, which had stood in breathless stasis for a sennight, now stirred with a profound, malefic intent!
[Aieeeeeee!]
A harrowing shriek tore through the silence of the Darkwood. Under the heavy shroud of the blackest hour, the tragic crescendos of those men and women echoed with a nerve-shredding intensity.
Seraph, entrenched in a meditative trance within his lofty arboreal hollow, snapped his eyes open. His gaze pierced the dark with a crystalline sharpness as the chorus of agony reached his high sanctuary.
"The screams..." he murmured, his voice a mere sliver of sound.
The tether of his natural forces pulsed with a dire warning: the enigmatic predator had commenced its harvest.
The young magis sprang to his feet, casting his gaze beyond the hollow's edge. Below, the forest remained cloaked in its deceptive, shadow peace—yet not for long. A cacophony of human voices erupted, a fractured medley of terror so distorted that no coherent plea could be discerned.
[Crack—fwoom!]
In the span of a heartbeat, the shrieks of horror surged again, now erupting from every cardinal point. The lamentations of the woodfolk and the panicked bellows of the hunters collided in a chaotic symphony. Simultaneously, the first flickers of torchlight were struck—tiny embers manifesting amidst the Darkwood like falling ash scattered upon the earth.
"There, then!" Seraph resolved with chilling finality.
He fixed a predatory gaze upon the nearest cacophony, though the source lay leagues away. A shimmering, emerald luminescence began to radiate from him—a beacon of mageia brilliance defying the absolute black of the night. In a heartbeat, his mageia detonated into a verdant streak, lashing across the lightless canopy like a falling star.
Within mere breaths, Seraph plummeted toward the origin of the scream. Yet, he was met only by a harrowing stillness. Upon the sward lay a grotesque expanse of warm, steaming gore. Three blades remained, bitten deep into a trio of jagged stones—as if their owners had been driven to strike at the very earth in a fit of mindless lunacy before vanishing into the ether.
"This place—"
[Boom!]
Before the thought could manifest, a cataclysmic eruption thundered from beneath his very boots! The carpet of withered leaves and clotted blood was cast skyward by a violent force. The earth shuddered, mimicking a seismic convulsion in the heart of the Darkwood, as a shroud of choking dust obliterated all sight.
Thorny vines, as serrated and lethal as a hell-wrought saw, surged from the subterranean depths with preternatural velocity. They bifurcated like the limbs of a great demon, lunging at the mortal before them with a berserker's intent to slaughter!
"Curse it—!"
"Flamus Shellux!" Seraph detonated his defensive incantation in a splinter of a second.
[Fwoom—flash!]
A crimson aegis of roaring embers manifested before the young magis, its scarlet aura bathing the gloom in a fierce, incandescent glow. A tidal wave of heat erupted, coalescing into a flamus mageia shield that pulsed with absolute defensive power.
The thorny vines lunged at the fiery aegis with a feral disregard for their own preservation. The instant the opposing forces collided, a cataclysmic thermal detonation erupted in the heart of the timber, scattering incandescent embers in every cardinal direction.
[Boom—crackle!]
For the first time in its existence, the Raffbloom tasted the agony of searing heat. A high-pitched, piercing shriek reverberated from beneath the suffocating carpet of withered leaves.
[Geez!]
The flames raced along the vines with the predatory speed of a lethal toxin. The demon fibres thrashed against the earth in a frenzy of excruciating torment, the encroaching heat inflicting an absolute misery. Though it eventually managed to lash the fire into extinction, the vines remained contorted and charred, their forms ruined by the blaze. As the embers died, the enigmatic foe retracted its serrated thorns, slithering back into the subterranean dark with a newfound dread.