The assault from below showed no sign of letting up. The beasts vaulted into the air with a tireless, mechanical ferocity, forcing the young magis to weave his spells with a desperate, surgical speed.
"Flamus Circulus!"
"Flamus Gustblasz!"
"Flamus Flarecloud!"
"Flamus Cinderfall!"
With every syllable of the High Tongue he spat.
[RRRR-GHA-GHA-GHA!]
Another hundred of the pack tried to intercept his fall. They were relentless, their claws reaching for his vitals with lethal intent.
Some used the shoulders of the climbing undead as living springboards, their powerful, coil-like legs making the forty-metre drop look like a joke. They mocked gravity with a sickening ease.
As Seraph's incantations hit their crescendo, the gathered mageia ignited in a series of radiant, amber shockwaves. The thermal pulses expanded outward, slamming the encroaching Crawlers back into the void before they could get a grip on his flesh.
But even with the absolute barrier of his Art, the discordant, rhythmic roars echoing just inches from his ears kept his heart hammering a frantic staccato against his ribs.
The lunar disc bled into a rhythmic, sanguine hue—a grim sign of a night cursed by ancient omens. A torrential downpour of igneous rain began to tear through the sky, looking like a meteoric cataclysm as it veiled the Ragguard circuit in a shroud of amber and ash. From every shadowed corner of the town, the people watched the phenomenon: a cascading veil of crimson embers haemorrhaging from a low-slung canopy of soot.
The clash of steel fell into a rhythmic silence as both the Ragguard garrison and the demonic horde recoiled, their eyes locked on the atmospheric upheaval. They stood frozen, unable to wrap their heads around this sudden, violent defiance of the natural order.
The clouds above ignited into a furnace-red, shedding a rhythmic sleet of glowing cinders. Amidst the biting chill of the frontier twilight, the heat bleeding from the sky offered no comfort; it was a heat born of mageia, not sanctuary. Jagged static discharges coiled through the vapour, birthing a primal dread that gnawed at the very marrow of the onlookers.
The world seemed to dissolve into a rhythmic fall of ash, the temperature surging until the air grew as stifled and oppressive as the pits of Helheim. In these final days of the Laurasian calendar, the northern reaches should have been surrendered to the bite of the blizzard; this artificial summer, ripped from the throat of the gale, was a defiant herald of the unnatural.
Having woven the threads of his spells into a single, volatile web, the young magis finally unleashed the confluence, unable to hold the internal pressure of the mana a heartbeat longer.
"Flamus Arrowrain—ARDEO!!" Seraph commanded, his voice a rhythmic thunder that saturated the theatre of war.
[VRA-FLASH—!!!]
The composite liturgy detonated with a blinding radiance.
The sky fractured as if a second sun had been born within the clouds, casting a rhythmic, incandescent glare across the million-strong horde.
The scions of the abyss—creatures whose very essences recoiled from the light—found their senses shattered. It was for this exact hatred of the radiance that the Legion had timed its strike for the dying hours of the day. But now, the daylight had returned to haunt them with a vengeful, artificial fury.
Amidst the bruised twilight, nobody expected this incandescent flare—a rhythmic expansion of thermal radiation so absolute it seared the very atmosphere. The ultraviolet light was so caustic that the lesser undead found their desiccated hides blossoming into a mosaic of char and blisters.
The horde recoiled, talons raking at the sky in a futile attempt to shield their eyes from the celestial glare. But there was no reprieve. As abruptly as it had ignited, the radiance was swallowed by a rhythmic, predatory gloom, replaced by a cascading veil of orange embers that shimmered like the very silt of the grave.
These droplets weren't harmless pyrotechnics, nor were they the life-giving waters of spring.
In a heartbeat, the suspended ash transmuted into a million serrated arrowheads of liquid fire. They accelerated with a rhythmic, mechanical ferocity, plummeting toward the earth in a frantic, homicidal cadence.
This was the Flame Arrowrain—a liturgy of total eradication.
Seraph levelled the Rubyflame at the roiling mass of several hundred thousand Crawlers and undead entrenched beyond the Ragguard curtain. In this theatre of density, precision was a discarded concept; the young magis didn't need a target.
The torrential downpour of igneous shafts began to perforate the landscape, with some of the overflow even slamming into the upper battlements. The sound of a million flaming arrows tearing through the heat-warped atmosphere was a rhythmic, high-pitched shriek that vibrated through the marrow of every living soul.
"By the Goddess... this defies reason! A Warlock Spell!" Leonis bellowed, his voice a rhythmic thunder of awe and burgeoning panic. "Hell's teeth!!"
The Ragguard garrison stood transfixed, their mouths agape as they witnessed a spectacle that bordered on the divine. In the common records of the magister, nine out of ten spells were merely the foundational weaves of an initiate. But a Warlock truly worthy of the title—one who commanded the visceral respect of the Crown—was defined by the mastery of the Mid-Tier spell.
Seraph had just breached the threshold of a true Warlock, and the battlefield was about to pay the price in blood and ash.
A mid-tier liturgy was a threshold of primordial violence, a force powerful enough to unmake both demon and man with a single, rhythmic brush of its essence. Unleashing that kind of power without absolute, surgical mastery was like turning a rabid monster loose in the middle of a dogfight; it made the line between ally and enemy completely moot, trapping everyone in the same incinerating hell.
In fact, the Sanctus's records were stained with stories of magis who had been swallowed by the very storms they'd summoned—their own power recoiling to claim their lives. Unless an initiate had iron-clad confidence in their own skin, they'd never dare to bridge the gap between a basic spell and a mid-tier catastrophe.
The Ragguard garrison, hearing the General's frantic warning, stood paralysed, their eyes wide with a growing terror. The igneous deluge before them didn't look like a human spell; it looked like a rhythmic, tectonic disaster—the work of a magis who had moved beyond the mortal coil.
The rise of a practitioner capable of such a feat was a rare, rhythmic omen. But the possibility that this kid had loosed a force he couldn't steer was a much darker prospect.
As the horizon ignited, a chilling doubt began to ripple through the ranks: did Seraph intend to wipe the Legion off the map, or was he ready to turn the entire battlefield—soldier and monster alike—into one massive, ash-choked pyre?
In that moment of suspended dread, Leonis let out a mageia augmented roar that saturated the air.
"Lord Seraph has loosed a mid-tier spell!" the General bellowed, his voice amplified by a surge of force that shook the fortress foundations. "All divisions, assume the Celestial-Earthen Phalanx! Everyone to the bastions! Get to the bunkers and brace for impact! MOVE!"
Leonis was a veteran of a thousand slaughters. As a commander of his standing, he handled vocal mageia with a seasoned speed that bypassed the need for formal incantations. His order echoed through the streets of Ragguard like a clap of thunder—a rhythmic warning to find cover before the sky fell.