Yet, to his bewilderment, Eldra offered a thin, sharp smile.
"Ha! I was merely jesting with you," she laughed, her posture relaxing.
"Have you forgotten how you were admitted as a novice a decade ago? To join the Sanctus, one must always submit to a rigorous audit of their mageia. That protocol includes an exhaustive examination of both form and essence. How could we possibly have overlooked a demonic crystal sealed upon your sternum?" Eldra remarked, seemingly delighted at the chance to needle the stoic young man.
"Hah..." Seraph exhaled a heavy, weary sigh.
Regardless of her intent, he found no amusement in the mockery.
Eldra's cadence shifted abruptly, her voice sharpening into a blade of pure reproach.
"My intent was not to dwell upon the fables of half-bloods," she declared, her tone vibrating with a burgeoning fury. "It concerns your dual affinity. Such a gift is rare; it has been decades since I last laid eyes upon a Flamewind Warlock! To shroud such prowess is to betray the very essence of your mageia. Had you been granted the proper mana potions and elixirs to catalyse your growth, you would have ascended to the rank of magis years ago. By now, you might well have stood as a Warlock—perhaps even a High Warlock!"
Her eyes flared with incandescent displeasure, and the sheer weight of her rebuke sent a tide of heat sweeping across the chamber. The artefacts along the walls rattled under the pressure of her aura. Though nothing shattered, the primal terror she commanded was undiluted.
Eldra was a Warlock of the elemental arts, her authority no less than that of a dragon lord. It was whispered that her Flamus-Rose mageia could single-handedly annihilate Demon Lord and the cinders of a legion ten million strong. Her power was such that every sovereign of the human realms bowed in deference; she was the Grandmaster who had anchored the very foundations of Arkflame for decades.
"Evelyn has indeed apprised you of the matter," Seraph admitted, bowing his head to the inevitable.
"How could I remain oblivious when she vanished into your company for the entire night?" Eldra countered, her eyes narrowing with a predatory focus. "I have already wrung the truth from her—that you sequestered her within your private quarters for a most intimate encounter."
"I… I did no such thing—" Seraph attempted to protest, the words catching in his throat.
He felt the sting of a false accusation, yet he could not entirely dismantle Eldra's logic. The facts of the night were indisputable, leaving him with no fortress of denial.
"Your neighbours in the adjacent chambers have lodged a formal grievance... apparently, the pair of you made such a cacophonous groaning that they were jolted from their sleep in the dead of night!" Eldra declared, her voice heavy with reproach.
Her gaze pierced through him as if he'd plundered her most cherished treasure. She sounded like a matriarch upbraiding a son-in-law for transgressing the bounds of propriety before a union could be sanctified.
"The groaning... well, yes... but that was because I—"
"I will not meddle in the dalliances of youth—however, whatever you do, ensure you employ protection at all times! Now that you have claimed both her form and her heart, you are bound to see to her well-being. You are strictly forbidden from forsaking her! But as I have warned you before... should you desire to wed her officially... you must first prove capable of besting me in combat!" Eldra spoke with such velocity she denied him even a heartbeat to offer a defence.
"Wait a moment! Between us, there was no—!"
"I have a mandate of grave importance for you!" Eldra continued without pause.
"Hold! The nature of my acquaintance with Evelyn—"
"Every last Piperclown is dead," Eldra declared, her voice dropping to a chilling frost.
The moment the words left her lips, the chamber succumbed to a suffocating silence. The hearth, which had been radiating warmth, seemed to turn to primordial ice. Seraph's shock was so total he instantly forgot the scandal regarding Evelyn.
He had fought those demonic jesters a mere month ago, yet the memory felt like it belonged to another age. He grasped the magnitude of the catastrophe at once.
"How did they die? Did the Council decree their execution?" Seraph asked, his brow furrowed.
"We do not pointlessly slaughter captured demons; the intelligence wrung from them is far too precious," Eldra replied.
"Then how did it happen?" Seraph pressed.
"We secured them with the utmost rigour, bound by the most exacting constraints. Our High Warlocks had woven layers of binding mageia over them," Eldra recounted, her voice edged with lingering horror. "Yet, the moment the gaolers turned their backs—for a mere heartbeat—the creatures swallowed demonic toxins concealed in their maws. They ended their own lives without a shred of hesitation."
"How could they harbour such venom?" Seraph asked, his expression hardening. "I searched them myself. I was entirely oblivious to the fact they carried such lethality under their tongues all along."
The implications were harrowing. Had that hidden cache been a weapon rather than a draught of poison, they might well have breached their cells and slaughtered the vulnerable in the very heart of the Stormcloud Citadel.
Such a calamity was far from impossible. Beyond the official hierarchy—from the rank of acomage to the Grandmaster—the Citadel sheltered an unofficial collective: the novices.
Those gifted with an affinity for mageia who were admitted into the Sanctus were not immediately dubbed acomages, nor were they yet acknowledged as magis. These youths began their tenure as novices.
Approximately three hundred novices resided within the Sanctus. They were permitted to undertake only Rank I mandates—the most elementary of tasks. Each year, several would endure the preliminary trials to ascend to the rank of acomage, finally becoming apprentice magis and official members of the Sanctus.
Frail as these novices and acomages might be, they were the saplings of the Sanctus, destined to flourish into the elite of the future. Perhaps one amongst them was fated to become a peerless Archwarlock. Should even a single novice perish, the very foundations of the Sanctus would be shaken.
"It's no failing of yours," Eldra remarked, her tone heavy with clinical detachment. "Though we've lost a few immediate leads, we did manage to wring a measure of critical intelligence from them before the end."
"Concerning what?" Seraph asked, his suspicion piqued.
"We harbour a grim suspicion that the Piperclowns' habit of abducting children and commoners was far more than some perverted ritual," Eldra posited.
"What was their design for the captives, then?" Seraph pressed.
"Our primary conjecture is that the demons sought to use the human form as a vessel—a font to bolster their own power," Eldra explained. "Every man, whether magis or commoner, possesses mana. They likely intended to siphon this essence, for the mageia of man can be transmuted into their own twisted demonic fel. Secondly, it's a well-worn truth that every demon relishes the taste of human flesh. To a high-tier demon, we are naught but a delicacy. This is the very reason the Legion braved the Mist Ocean from Helheim to invade Laurasia. The recent spate of abductions suggests they've grown weary of failing to seize our realms through sheer force. They've pivoted their strategy: infiltrating human society with lesser demons rather than committing to a blunt, large-scale offensive."