Those Crawlers that had launched themselves into a desperate, mid-air assassination were intercepted mid-flight, seized by the kinetic force of the mageia and dragged across the sky until they were pinned against the surrounding spires. The ensuing tremors resonated through the very foundations of the fortress, yet the cacophony was as brief as it was brutal.
Several of the beasts suffered instantaneous punctures through their hearts; the transition from predator to carcass was so swift their primal minds could not register the end. A few, fuelled by the sheer momentum of their final, savage leap, continued their trajectory as hollow husks before their lifeless remains crunched onto the cobbles at the magis's feet.
The young man hovered in a state of preternatural calm. A small orbit of enchanted throwing knives continued their rhythmic, protective gyre around his silhouette. Beneath him, the stone was a canvas of emerald slaughter, painted in the steaming, dull-green vitriol of the fallen. Masonry was scarred and buildings sundered, but at the centre of the ruin lay the still, silent forms of the Crawler pack.
As the wind-lances bled away into the ether, the carcasses of the Crawlers remained largely intact.
Some lay with their craniums punctured by a singular, clinical strike.
Some bore a hollowed aperture at the very centre of the sternum.
Some manifested jagged fractures across their grey, leathery hides.
Some exhibited visceral lacerations along the dorsal spine where the enchanted knives had overhauled them in flight.
The remainder were marked by ragged, weeping gashes where the gale-blades had reaped their toll.
The entire engagement—a frantic, pulse-pounding theatre of martial brilliance—had ignited and been extinguished within the span of mere minutes.
The Ragguard soldiers remained frozen, their eyes wide as they stared at the scene. They were awestruck by the young magis's power, feeling as though he belonged to a different world entirely.
While they were grounded, he moved with effortless grace in the air—a stark contrast to their own limitations.
The encroaching shadows cast by the Arkdreadnought's hull shrouded the city, forcing the garrison to look upward at the Arkflame airship now dominating the Ragguard firmament. The standards and military sigils emblazoned across its flanks were unmistakable; at long last, the Ragguard sentries understood they had not been forsaken to face the abyss in solitude.
Though no grand land-host had yet arrived, it was a curious thing that the singular presence of the young magis before them provided a more profound reprieve than a thousand infantry.
As the immediate crisis withered into silence, Seraph descended with ghostly grace to audit the fallen, ensuring no Crawler harboured a lingering spark of life.
Simultaneously, the tortoise-formation began a disciplined dispersal. The pavise shields parted like a receding tide, and a man of commanding bearing emerged, striding toward the magis.
"I'm General Leonis of the Ragguard Fortress!" the man announced, his tone the brusque, unvarnished cadence of a soldier, yet tempered with a necessary deference. " Identify yourself!"
Leonis was the law of the Northwest; as Ragguard functioned as both a military encampment and a frontier bastion, he held the dual mandate of General and Lord Governor. Within these walls, his word was the only one that mattered.
"Seraph, of the Sanctus Sanctum," the young man replied with clinical brevity. "I'm currently engaged in the Bloody Hunting mandate. Forty-eight hours ago, the Arkflame High Command received intelligence that Ragguard was being subjected to a sustained siege by a million-strong undead host and hundreds of Crawlers. I have made all haste to intervene and break the pack's stranglehold upon your city."
"A Warlock from the Sanctus, eh? About damn time," Leonis remarked, the tension finally bleeding from his shoulders. "A minute later and you'd have been counting our corpses instead of saving them."
A rhythmic thunder of a thousand boots suddenly echoed through the thoroughfares, converging upon the town square where they stood.
"Father! You're alive!" Rosalyn's voice rang out, a frantic cry that shattered the momentary calm.
The girl lunged toward Leonis, a frantic, desperate concern etched across her features.
As Seraph observed the pair, he noted the shared inheritance of their raven hair. Rosalyn's tresses, in particular, were long and lustrous, possessing a preternatural sheen that framed her youthful, elegantly curved visage—marking her beauty as exceptional even among those of her own summers. The lineage was unmistakable; they were father and daughter, bound by blood and bone.
"Rosie! By the Goddess, what the hell are you doing back here?!" Leonis barked, his face turning pale as if he'd seen a ghost. "I ordered that escort to get you and your mother to the secret base! Was I speaking to the damn wind?!"
"Mother is safe... but I slipped the watch," Rosalyn replied, her head hung low under the weight of her defiance. "I came back to stand with you. I couldn't leave the civilians trapped behind these walls."
"You've got your mother's damn stubbornness!" he roared, his heart seizing with dread. "Do you have any idea how many Crawlers are inside the wire? If Seraph hadn't stepped in at the last second, I'd be a corpse! You get out of here while the gates are still standing!"
Leonis's fury was such that the veins at his temples throbbed with a jagged intensity.
"I only wanted to help..." Rosalyn whispered, her voice barely a thread in the wind.
"I take my leave—" Seraph's voice cut through the domestic strife, sharp and surgically precise.
"Robin! Direct the men to secure the Crawler remains in this sector. I'm resuming the hunt for the stragglers. Should any of you possess the stomach to cull the beasts still haunting the shadows, this is the hour for a definitive purge. They are effectively entombed within a cage of stone; they have no path for retreat."
"Understood! It would be my absolute pleasure to join this banquet of slaughter!" Robin declared, his features alight with a grim, martial hunger.
He pivoted with clinical haste, issuing mandates for a contingent to secure the scores of Crawler carcasses strewn across the thoroughfares and the scarred masonry of the spires.
A Crawler was a formidable engine of ruin, yet its potency withered when isolated and ensnared within the coordinated phalanx of human warriors. Thus, the urban sprawl of Ragguard presented a golden interval—a rare alignment of fate where the predators could be systematically encircled and culled with minimal attrition.
The contenders who remained bound to the Bloody Hunting mandate were alight with a grim, martial fervour at the prospect of claiming such a kill. Conversely, the hunters who had renounced the contest resolved to act as a supporting rearguard, undertaking the visceral labour of harvesting the spoils in the wake of the slaughter.
Seraph prepared to vault back into the firmament to resume the cull, but Rosalyn surged toward the magis before he could depart.
"Stay! I will aid in the eradication of these demons—"
"I refuse." Seraph checked his stride, his retort cutting through her words like a cold blade.
"I... I beg your pardon? On what grounds?" Rosalyn faltered, the refusal echoing with an impossibility she could scarcely parse.
"Because I possess no leisure to act as your guardian. This hunt is far too savage for a little girl playing at being a soldier," Seraph stated, his voice a void of emotion.