When Lucius regained his vision, he was still being carried by that giant crow. He tried his best to set himself free of its grasp. He didn't even manage to damage it in any way before it decided to let go of him. He was falling through the air, undoubtedly to his demise. It was awful and ironic at the same time. A Hell Purger, Elysium's most elite warrior, killed by being thrown to death from a great height. Despite all his efforts to be the best he can, he will meet his end as a fallen angel anyway. If only he had wings, then this wouldn't be a problem at all. Now the only thing that was left to do was to brace for the impact and pray to God to accept him in his company upon his death.
And then he woke up, breathing heavily, all covered in sweat. As an angel, because he almost never slept, Lucius didn't have any experience with those extremely uncomfortable dreams where one thinks he's falling down to his death from great heights. Due to his encounter with the sleep demon, he could tell that was a dream, and he was really thankful he doesn't dream more often, because all the dreams he had up until this point weren't all that enjoyable, and falling to his death from a great height wasn't an exception.
Now that he was awake, he immediately had second thoughts about dreams, because he was immediately met with three realisations, and neither of them was any good. The first one was that he's in complete darkness (something he was becoming more and more used to by the day); the second one was that he was in some cold and damp place, sitting on the stone floor; and the third, final, and most disturbing realisation was that he sensed demons nearby. Lots and lots of demons…
This couldn't be good. There were only two places where there were this many demons, and that was either the front or hell itself. And this didn't look like a front at all. Correction, it didn't look like anything because Lucius couldn't see anything. Trying to solve that problem, Lucius tried summoning his lightsword so he could illuminate the darkness, but to his surprise, instead of his lightsword, he managed to summon only a small spark, not much different from the one when somebody is trying to light a match. He tried for the second, third, and fourth times, but to no avail. He felt like something was blocking the full potential of his power, and no matter how much he strained, he was met with the same result.
This was most unfortunate, but Lucius didn't allow himself to get discouraged just yet. He started crawling in the dark, using his hands to feel his surroundings. He moved forward a bit, and his hands touched something cold and metallic. Lucius touched it some more, and he realised that he's touching a series of long and vertically placed rods, also known as bars. This confirmed his gravest fears. He was in a cell, imprisoned by the demons inside their territory.
But this didn't make any sense. He scratched his head, confused by his situation, and this made him feel severe pain. Then he remembered. He was knocked out by that piece of rubble when that bomb exploded. But why did the demons carry him back into their own territory? The crow could have easily dropped him in the void, and he would have fallen to his death. Instead, they carried him here and imprisoned him. What did they hope to achieve with this? The giant crow was going for Nicholas when he pushed him out of the way; he was sure of that. Maybe they wanted to capture Nicholas and interrogate him in order to find out the details of the fortress's defence? Or were they interested in something else?
Anyway, they wanted Nicholas alive for some reason, but instead, they managed to get their hands only on him. They didn't know he was a Hell Purger for sure, since Hell Purgers didn't have anything that made them distinct among other angels per se except for their power, and he fought like any skilled warrior in this battle. Maybe even a bit worse, considering that fiasco with the unsuccessful hijacking of a ride, but still, there wasn't anything he did during that battle that could make anyone think he was anything but a regular soldier.
Be that as it may, Lucius was in a bad position. Even if he wanted to tell them anything they could be interested in, he had a problem because he didn't know anything. In a way, that was good, because there was no possibility for him to tell them anything that could be of use to them under pressure, but in both cases, he could expect to be tortured to death or executed in front of the demonic army as a spectacle. Well, there was one other option. He could escape. But could he? Something was preventing him from summoning his lightsword, and this made him think that trying to summon a portal to Elysium would be more than useless. This sadly forced him to do the only thing he could do, which was to wait.
Waiting proved to be much harder than one could initially think. It's one thing to wait for night to turn into day, and completely another to wait for your certain demise. Realising that purely waiting is doing him more harm than good, Lucius decided to pray instead and ask for the courage and comfort from the Lord himself.
However, he barely had the time to properly begin with his prayer when he was interrupted by the sound of a door opening in the distance. He knew what that meant, and he wasn't looking forward to it, but he had no choice. He had to endure it, so he waited until a flame from the torch didn't appear at what appeared to be a staircase in the distance. Two grolls carrying torches were accompanying a black figure. As they came nearer and nearer to Lucius, there wasn't any doubt. Accompanied by those two grolls, a black knight was approaching him!
As was the case for every kind of demon that existed, Lucius heard about black knights from his master, although black knights weren't exactly demons, at least not origin-wise. Instead, they were the most corrupted humans, who somehow managed to secure their souls from being taken by any demon that tried to do so but undoubtedly deserved a place in hell. Instead of eternal torment, because they proved themselves as excellent evildoers, they are offered to continue their evildoing in the afterlife in exchange for serving in hell's armies. Since they all accept this most generous offer, their souls are then put into armour enchanted with black magic, which allows them to use that armour as a body. They are elite soldiers of hell, and they are very powerful and dangerous. A squad of black knights is more dangerous than thousands of grolls or minotaurs, and seeing one of their kind advancing towards him in this situation where he couldn't even try to defend himself made Lucius understand that the situation was even more severe than he dared to imagine. Even if he could put up a fight, he wasn't sure he could match a black knight in terms of power and strength.
The group finally reached Lucius's cell, and the black knight approached the cell so he could stand right in front of Lucius, carefully examining him, while the grolls remained standing behind him. The black knight was radiating cold, but his gaze somehow managed to be even colder than his very presence, and Lucius felt like he was piercing his very soul with it. Cold was not the only thing he radiated with. Lucius could literally sense the evil itself coming from the black knight. His kind served as hell's elite soldiers for a reason. He was tall, from bottom to top, in his black amour. His red eyes, shining from the darkness of his helmet, were the only things that made him look alive; otherwise, one could think that the armour was walking by itself. In other words, it was frightening to even see a black knight, let alone in these kinds of circumstances.
Lucius knew that the black knight wouldn't stare at him forever. Soon, the interrogation would begin, and that was what instilled great fear in him. He knew what was written in the Gospel of Matthew about the speech when one is arrested by the enemies of God, and therefore he knew that the Spirit of his Father would speak for him. Even if it weren't so, he was eloquent, and he would have somehow managed to speak for himself. But talking itself wasn't scaring him. What scared him was the torture he would surely be subjected to. Demons took prisoners only for two reasons. The first was extracting information, and the second was torture. Even if the prisoner knew no information that could be extracted from him, he was tortured simply because the demons enjoyed torturing. In fact, torture brings such joy and entertainment to demons that it isn't uncommon for them to pick someone among themselves when they're bored and torture him to death.
Lucius was aware of that, and that's why he knew that if he didn't think of something to get him out of this mess, a slow and painful death was guaranteed. But there wasn't a way out. Even if he did manage to get out of the cell, on the other side, the black knight would wait for him and find him. There was no escape.
And then the black knight spoke.