Demon Knight

Silat and the tapasa pursue Rakshas over rooftops and ramparts, suspecting he means to draw them somewhere rather than escape. The chase ends at a domed temple he slips into. Stealing past the guards within, Silat finds a stair leading to the upper galleries, and from that vantage the group beholds a ghastly sight: an enormous living mound of flesh slung in mid-air by chains, fed through tubes by fleshy pods hanging from the ceiling. Below, guards pour a barrel of liquid into one such pod, which seals once filled.

A woman's screaming pulls Silat's eye back. Pregnant, bound and naked, she is lowered into an opening in the flesh and dropped into the fluid it holds, unable to climb free with her arms tied. She shrieks as the child inside her kicks furiously until it tears its way out of her, killing her. The newborn is no human infant but a horned, jagged-toothed thing; Silat has just seen how the Daka are made. The creature is expelled through a second opening, gathered by guards and caged with other Daka young while the ruined mother is hauled out.

Rakshas, watching unseen, alone grasps the full process and explains it to the three Bakiraka: the mass is countless apostles fused as one and nourished on amniotic fluid. Being apostles, it is tied to the Astral World, so pregnant women fed to it have their babies corrupted by evil into Daka. Before leaving, he warns them that Ganishka is no mere human. Silat departs resolved to uncover the emperor's true aims. Outside, the Daka charge Locus, who answers by releasing his own form, fusing with his horse into a metal centaur-like being. Wielding a double-bladed lance, he skewers Daka in rows, hoists the impaled swarm skyward and flings them off, telling Ganishka not to equate such weaklings with apostles as his whole cavalry likewise sheds its human shape. Ganishka responds by sending elephant-shaped pishacha and fresh Daka into the fray.

Silat follows Rakshas into a temple and witnesses the gruesome creation of the Daka from a fused mass of apostles fed pregnant women. Rakshas explains the process to the Bakiraka and warns that Ganishka is not human. Silat resolves to learn the emperor's true nature. Outside, Locus reveals his centaur-like apostle form and slaughters the Daka, prompting Ganishka to send pishacha and more Daka into battle.

This twenty-one-page Millennium Falcon Arc chapter was published in Young Animal issue 2 on January 9, 2004. It delivers the disturbing origin of the Daka and the first full display of Locus in his released apostle form.