Princess Bloomy was the only entity within the Darkwood capable of speech; there was no rational avenue for her to possess knowledge of his identity or his life within the Sanctus Sanctum, half a realm away.
"I find the human brain to be a most exquisite vessel, teeming with vast troves of memory—particularly when harvested while the pulse still beats," she remarked, her voice lilting with a sickening envy. "It is a delicacy you really ought to sample. It has granted me such fascinating insights… for instance, regarding certain girls named Marina, Evelyn, and Lenora…"
With a languid, affected grace, she ran a slender finger across a fleshy petal to wipe away a smear of fresh crimson, before drawing the digit across her tongue with a slow, ravenous devotion.
"How dare you!" Seraph's roar was a thunderclap of unadulterated fury.
His composure fractured the instant those three names spilled from the Queen's blood-stained maw. The dragon's scale had not merely been brushed; it had been struck with a hammer.
"Flamus Bombardus!"
He bellowed the incantation, the sound vibrating through the thorny dome. A sphere of concentrated solar-fury erupted, lancing forward with murderous intent—a formal declaration of total war. Fifty Barkguards surged in response, their quaternary blades weaving a steel-wood lattice to intercept the mageia with clinical precision.
Yet, before the first leaf-blade could graze the spell, the young man's hands blurred in a frantic weaving of wards.
"Flamus Shellux!"
"Flamus Loricus!"
"Flamus Guardrix!"
The protective layers manifested in a rapid, seamless sequence before the primary charge could detonate. A tiered array of flaming sigils orbited his frame—a whirling barricade of incandescent fire.
The Barkguards' keen edges bit into the surface of the fire-orb. In that heartbeat, the core detonated.
[Whamm!]
A blinding crimson radiance saturated the vault as the explosion's report shattered the stillness. Within the twenty-metre height of the dome, the concussive force and sonic backlash reached a crescendo of absolute destruction.
The Darkwood shuddered once more. Yet, the resonance felt muffled, the tremors dampened as if the dome itself sought to contain the carnage within its wooden ribs.
A tidal wave of flame scoured the interior. The fifty Barkguards pivoted, crossing their four blades to forge a makeshift phalanx. Though a handful of Barkguards and Nightshades were incinerated—reduced to ash by the blast—the majority endured the solar-scourge.
Instantly, the amber glow of illusory fel erupted from the rear. Fifty lances of spectral light—the soul-binding tethers of the Jackblooms—converged upon the solitary human. They bore no physical weight, no kinetic force; they were a collective, psychic assault aimed directly at the sanctuary of his mind.
"Aaargh!" Seraph shrieked, the sound wrenched from his throat as if his very brain were being flayed.
The agony within his cranium was a pulsating torment, a pressure so immense he feared his skull might burst. He could mitigate a portion of the psychic onslaught, yet the thorny dome acted as a suffocating vice, robbing him of the space to evade. He was forced to contend with three hundred elite foes while functionally shackled, his mobility stripped away within this arboreal tomb.
[TATT-TATT-TATT-TATT!]
A staccato volley of peppercorn-ordnance from the Peppershot units hammered against his mageia-shrouds. Though the glowing, coal-red projectiles disintegrated upon impact, it was a mere matter of time before the constant attrition breached his final defences.
[VREEEEEE—!]
Suddenly, the Sawgrazz warriors leaped high into the gloom. Their leaf-saws—vibrant green blades lined with shark-like serrations—vibrated with such intensity they produced an ear-splitting resonance. They brought their jagged steel down upon the mageia barrier, the impact birthing hairline fractures across the translucent shield.
Simultaneously, the entire Raffbloom legion commenced a coordinated offensive, moving with the cold discipline of veterans born of a demon war. The chaos of their assault was a deception; every strike was a precise note in a symphony of slaughter directed at a solitary target.
Seraph understood he had no luxury to indulge in his pain. The solitary imperative of his existence was to weave a counter-measure with blistering celerity.
"Flamus Catharis!"
"Flamus Redemtus!"
"Flamus Reflexus!"
The anti-curse mageia detonated from his core, indifferent to the physical strikes hammering his perimeter. The spell of reflection flared with defiant brilliance, meeting the psychic lances head-on.
[Zap-zap-zap-zap-zap!]
Wards of purification and a mirror-shield composed of a million jagged facets manifested around him. A relentless series of explosions erupted as the murky mist of the illusory fel collided with his light, and the mirror-sigils hurled the demonic influence back at the Jackblooms with aggressive, incandescent spite.
The spectral orange light and the crimson hail of peppercorn-ordnance were violently recoiled. Even the hulking Barkguards and the surrounding host were hurled backward by the kinetic backlash. The spell-work was merciless, funnelling the reflected demonic fel back into the Jackblooms with such ferocity that several were instantly detonated into a visceral slurry.
Reflexus was a truly malevolent bit of mageia—a hybrid of defensive ward and offensive strike. It functioned as an absolute mirror, reflecting every particle of energy within its radius with total indifference to ally or foe. Fortune favoured the solitary; with no companions to shield, the young magis could unleash the spell's full, indiscriminate potential without a shred of hesitation.
The migraine besieging Seraph's psyche began to dissolve, his vision sharpening into a cold, lethal focus once more. He fixed his frigid stare directly into the blackened, fanged maw of Princess Bloomy. Both combatants understood with clinical certainty that the second movement of this bloody symphony had commenced.
The Sawgrazz warriors lunged, their vibrating blades colliding with the mirror-shards with terrifying force. Formidable as the Reflexus barrier was, the Sawgrazz breed possessed the highest piercing threshold of the entire floral host, eclipsing even the explosive yield of a Paprikabomb. As dozens of their serrated saws struck in perfect, thunderous unison, the crystalline shield shattered into a million glittering fragments.
Yet, Seraph had been baiting their advance. His eyes flared with a brilliant, predatory luminescence—
"Ventus Enchant!"
The young magis commanded his airborne legion to strike.
An emerald radiance ignited upon every hovering blade. The Third Law of the Magis remained absolute: superior power dictated the victor. Within this starless vault, there was no entity whose mageia capacity could rival his own; no demon possessed the celerity to shadow the flight of his steel.
The armada of mageia-blades darted and weaved—a frantic ballet of steel evading the serrated saws and the relentless peppercorn-ordnance that sought to ground them.
In a heartbeat, the airborne legion saturated every corner of the fray; the claustrophobic confines of the starless vault offered no sanctuary for the static. Not even the viscous, heavy gloom within the briar-dome could dampen their aggressive celerity.
[Zip—shick-shick-shick-shick!]
The blades lanced through the heads of the Peppershots, detonating them in a violent, visceral chain reaction. Crimson peppercorns sprayed across the dome like shrapnel from a canister shot, several rounds perforating fellow Raffblooms and consigning them to the abyss. Simultaneously, numerous Sawgrazz warriors were struck through their cores with ruinous force. The theatre of war, restricted to this suffocating enclosure, reached a fever pitch.
The onslaught did not merely persist; it escalated, the savagery of both factions multiplying with every exchange. Destruction and the staccato report of detonations reigned supreme, as demonic detritus and shattered steel rained upon the mire. The Raffbloom host knew no surrender; those who still drew breath maintained a frantic barrage of fire and steel against his wards and his knives. The war-cries of the floral army thundered within the vault, the very ribs of the thorny dome vibrating without cease.