"An alien? Is that what you call my kind?"
The colossal beast's head still retained a trace of vitality. An eyeball that had struggled free from its charred shell stared fixedly at the master of the First Legion. Aparajita had always felt that voice trying to bore into his mind, but an invisible barrier blocked it—the knights' mental indoctrination and teaching machines called this psychic barrier "Emperor's Barrier," a psychic defense personally designed and constructed by the Emperor to resist psychic interference on a mental level. Aparajita remained unmoved. He continued swinging his axe at the beast's neck, silencing it.
"Why not use the name your humans gave my kind? Why do you fear that word?"
Aparajita grabbed the beast by one of its forehead horns and lifted its enormous hyena-like head, placing it before Regent Victor von Doom, who wore a dark green robe. The latter supported himself with a long staff, cold sweat covering his brow. The beast tried to say something else, but Victor von Doom gave it no opportunity. He pointed the flaming Golden Eagle staff at the beast's head, and the head rapidly shrank until it could be carried in one hand. Flames ignited beneath its flesh, bright tongues of fire spilling from its eye sockets. The supernatural Organic Matter blackened and peeled away, exposing jagged fangs beneath. Victor von Doom removed an iron-black alloy chain from his waist and gestured for Aparajita to thread it through the horned skull.
"A demon, is that it?"
Regent Victor von Doom accepted the thick iron chain, the skull swaying at its end. He could hear the demon cursing amid the flames. The bright fire in the skull's eye sockets gradually calmed, leaving nothing but charred blackness within, as if the heaviest shadows in the universe had gathered