The Primeval Era

The chains moved at the speed of light.

This was not metaphor. The solar chains that erupted from Damian’s burning form were constructs of compressed sunlight given shape and purpose, and they moved at the speed that sunlight moved, because how could any man or demon be faster than the light of the sun itself?

Barbatos saw them coming. She recognized the threat and began to react with centuries of combat instinct, her body twisting sideways, crimson smoke flaring in a defensive burst. She was fast, an Eighth Circle Duke whose reflexes had been honed across more battles than most human civilizations had existed to record.

The chains reached her before her body finished turning!

White-gold links of solidified solar radiance wrapped around her torso and arms, each link branding itself into her flesh as it made contact, searing through her demonic Mana and the smoke surrounding her and the pale skin beneath all of it.

Barbatos screamed, not the theatrical scream of a demon performing cruelty, but the raw involuntary sound of something experiencing purifying light pressed directly against a body made of corruption.

Across the citadel, the same scene played out four more times in the same instant.

Sitri was locked mid-shift into a single form, her leopard-spotted wings pinned to her back. Beleth took the chains across his massive frame and tried to flex against them with strength that would have snapped any material forged by human hands, but the links only tightened!

Leraje was snagged mid-leap between rooftops and bound so quickly she hit the stone below like wrapped cargo. Eligos managed to raise his shadow-lance between himself and the approaching chains, and the lance held for exactly one heartbeat before the solar radiance consumed it and found the demon behind it.

Five Dukes. Five sets of chains. All in the time it took a human heart to beat once!

Damian clenched his hands.

Get! Over! Here!

HUUM!

The chains pulled taut and then pulled harder, and the five bound Dukes were dragged through the air toward him with the helpless speed of fish being reeled in by something that did not care how much they thrashed. Barbatos clawed at her bindings and screamed profanity in languages that predated human speech. Beleth roared with fury that shook the buildings below. Eligos said nothing, but his eyes burned with cold calculation even while being hauled through the sky against his will.

They converged on Damian.

He floated above the cathedral with the chains arranging the five Dukes in a ring around his burning body, each one suspended close enough to feel the full intensity of his radiance but far enough that the purifying light didn’t kill them outright.

The solar chains held all five with equal indifference to their rank, the white-gold links continuing to brand and burn wherever they touched demonic flesh, preventing the activation of Mana, preventing them from calling upon their Land and Sky Physiques, preventing anything that might have given them a way to fight back.

Damian did not wish to deal with their Physiques right now. The chains would hold them, the purifying light would keep them docile, and they would stay exactly where he put them until he decided otherwise.

He looked at the demons coldly.

They looked back.

Barbatos, even while her slender frame was wrapped in solar chains that seared her skin with every breath, even while her horns smoked and her crimson eyes watered from the intensity of the light surrounding her, found it in herself to keep talking.

"So what if you did this?!" she spat, her voice cracking with agony she was too proud to fully acknowledge.

"You don’t even know that these aren’t even our main bodies, you fucker! You’re dead! I’ve now gathered plenty of information about you and your power as these bodies you’ve caught were meant precisely for this, to see what threats are on this side before we conquer everything!" She bared her rows of teeth. "We-"

"Barbatos, shut up."

The voice came from Eligos.

It was the first time the shadow-knight had spoken since his arrival at the Covenant, and his voice carried the flat authority of someone who had spent centuries choosing silence so that the rare occasions when he did speak would end conversations.

His eyes fixed on Barbatos with an expression that communicated volumes without needing to elaborate.

...!

Barbatos stopped speaking.

She blinked, her mouth still open, her next word dying on her tongue as the weight of what she had just freely given away settled across the other four Dukes. Sitri closed her eyes in visible disgust. Beleth’s roar trailed off into something that might have been a groan!

Leraje simply stared at Barbatos with annoyance.

Damian looked at Eligos.

The demon had just confirmed, by the urgency of his interruption, that Barbatos had been giving away real information.

Not their main bodies. Meant for intelligence gathering. Designed to assess threats before a larger campaign. Useful things to know, and Barbatos had handed them over in the space of a single tantrum.

But no matter. There was more to learn, and the demons weren’t going anywhere!

Damian’s burning gaze swept across all five of them, and when he spoke, his voice held the cold clarity of someone who had already decided how this conversation would end and was giving the other participants a chance to make it less painful for themselves.

"You still feel the same level of pain whether it’s these bodies or your main ones, right?" he said, and the question was not really a question. "Because I have questions, and you will either answer them, or..."

The solar chains around all five Dukes tightened by a fraction, drawing fresh screams from three of them and a sharp intake of breath from the two who were too disciplined to scream.

"Man, I don’t know how the pain of being scorched by a sun feels, but it shouldn’t be too much fun, right?"

BOOM!

The chains blazed brighter, and five Dukes of the 72 Thrones Beyond the River learned what it felt like to be held in the grip of something that burned with the patience of a star and the fury of a son whose mother was still screaming in their master’s hands!