Chapter 192: Solar Judgment! II
The description Damian read from the information his Mana provided about this ability had been clinical and precise.
At full expression, the bearer could command the power of the local sun itself within a localized domain. Grasping it had been one thing. Activating it was something else entirely.
Every cloud above the Covenant cleared.
Not in the slow recession that weather performed when it was finished with a place. Every cloud within dozens of miles simply ceased to exist, burned away in an instant by the power Damian had just called down, and the sky above the citadel became a naked expanse of blue holding nothing but the sun. The sun, which suddenly seemed closer than it had been a moment ago, closer and brighter and more focused, as if someone had reached up and adjusted its gaze to point directly at the white walls below.
Damian’s body changed.
The blue-gold radiance consuming him intensified beyond what the eyes of those below could safely look at, and his form became something that was no longer recognizable as human.
He became a humanoid solar flare, his outline visible only as a silhouette within a corona of white-gold judgment light so bright that it threw sharp-edged shadows across the entire citadel from a mile above.
His verdant tattoos still pulsed beneath the light, and his wing-shaped pupils still burned at the center of it, but everything else had been swallowed by the manifestation of a capability that turned the bearer into a conduit for the sun itself.
He raised his hand, and the light obeyed.
It came down not as pillars this time but as a wave, a cascading wall of white-gold radiance that he guided with the motion of his arm toward the five demons and the Dominion forces scattered across the citadel!
HUUM!
The wave moved with the inevitability of a tide that had been given permission to ignore the shore, and where it passed, the purifying light burned through demonic Mana and crimson corruption with the indiscriminate thoroughness of something that did not distinguish between ranks or titles.
Barbatos cursed.
The word she used had no translation in any human tongue, but the fear in it translated perfectly. She threw herself sideways through the air, her slender frame trailing smoke and burned skin, and the wave of light caught the edge of her and sent her spinning across the sky!
BOOOM!
Beleth abandoned his bone armor entirely as the light melted through it, his massive form shrinking as he shed layers of protection to gain speed. Sitri screamed in a voice that shifted between pitches, her forms flickering wildly. Leraje dropped her bow and ran across the rooftops with the desperation of prey that had realized its mistake too late. Eligos, silent even now, retreated northward with his shadow-lance raised behind him!
They were all running as they could barely fight back, their Land and Sky Physique beginning to burn to preserve their bodies!
The five pillars of crimson smoke that had been climbing toward the sky shattered!
CRACK!
The ritual to summon the Hand of the Demon Emperor, the carefully coordinated channeling that required all five Dukes contributing their threads simultaneously, came apart the way anything came apart when someone set it on fire. The crimson smoke dissipated into nothing, consumed by purifying light that refused to let corruption maintain its shape within the domain Damian had claimed.
Barbatos looked up at the burning figure above with eyes that had lost every trace of cruelty and found something older living behind them.
"Motherfucker, Retreat for now as we dont know who this fucker is!" she screamed. "Retr-"
Another wave of light cut her off and sent her tumbling through the air.
Below, in the streets and plazas of the Covenant, hundreds of thousands of faithful who had been huddling in fear and mourning for days stepped out of their dwellings and looked up at the sky.
What they saw was a being of pure light hanging above their cathedral, wings of blue-gold flame spreading across the heavens, guiding judgment down upon the demons and foreign soldiers who had invaded their home!
The rivers of white and gold Mana around the cathedral were surging in response, pulsing in rhythm with the figure above as if the sacred structure itself recognized what was happening and was lending its strength.
The first person to kneel was an old woman near the eastern quarter.
Then the people beside her knelt. Then the street behind them. Then the plaza beyond that. It spread through the citadel the way faith spread when faith had something to hold onto, and within moments, hundreds of thousands of the Covenant’s faithful were on their knees with their hands raised toward the burning figure above.
"Umoya weNkosi! Umoya weNkosi yasendulo!"
The Spirit of the Hallowed One! The Spirit of the Ancient Hallowed One!
The cry spread and multiplied, passing from mouth to mouth, growing louder with each voice that joined it, until the streets of the Covenant rang with the sound of hundreds of thousands of people who had decided they were witnessing the descent of an ancient and holy spirit come to deliver them from the demons at their door.
Damian, burning like a sun in the sky above, heard the chanting reach him through his heightened perception and had a brief moment where his cold fury was interrupted by genuine confusion about why everyone below seemed to think he was their ancient Hallowed ancestor.
Near the cathedral, Serala floated down toward the Hallowed Voice.
The old man stood surrounded by his Paladins and Holy Women, his white robes catching the blue-gold light falling from above, his kind eyes fixed on the burning figure in the sky.
When Serala landed beside him, her own wings still spread, her own verdant tattoos pulsing, her own transformed frame towering over the warriors around her, the Hallowed Voice turned his gaze from the sky to the young woman he had raised.
He looked at her.
He looked at the being above raining judgment on five Demon Dukes.
He looked back at her.
"Child," he said, and his voice carried the calm of a man who had lived long enough to be surprised by very few things but was willing to make an exception, "who...is that?"
"..."
The Hallowed Voice did not make any assumptions, but he wanted to know!
Serala opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, and found that the comprehensive explanation she had been preparing during the entire flight from the Cradle had completely abandoned her in the face of the Hallowed Voice’s quiet stare.
Serala truly had no words!
The Hallowed Voice saw this and returned his gaze to the sky where the being his people were calling the Ancient Hallowed Spirit was methodically driving five Demon Dukes out of his Covenant with the power of the sun itself.
As for Damian himself...
His eyes flsred brightly as blue flames surged around him while he uttered Persevere once more, and he looked at the scattering demons who barely got the chance to show their grand Land and Sky Physique as he would not allow them to run or escape.
No.
They would be bound, and they would answer to him!
So...
"Get over here!"
BOOM!
Solar chains erupted from him and surged out towards five Dukes!