The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2 novel Chapter 177

Part 25

“Eat a god?” Val exclaimed. “Aren’t gods completely immortal?”

“A god who has been eaten is not dead. If the Demon Lord is subsequently killed, the god can escape. But it is definitely the worst experience that one of us can be forced to endure.

“Also bear in mind that even gods can be killed, if they are forced into a tear in reality or a collapsed star of infinite density. There is no escaping from either of those for any thinking being, for only complete chaos can exist within them. Even the orderly nature of the energy of a mind is impossible there. And the most powerful DemonLords are capable of causing tears in reality at will, though it costs them dearly. It is also risky for them, since they are as vulnerable to the tears as any other, but they are not very reasonable.

“Still, let there be no doubt; so long as the demons exist, none of us are completely safe. They are incredibly hardy and resilient, and even the tiniest demon will eventually grow to be a terrible DemonLord if allowed to feed unchecked.”

“What do we really know about them, anyway?” Fire asked. “I mean, have you ever been able to interrogate one? I know that we learned to understand a bit of their communication during the last demon war here, but I never heard that we really learned anything about where they came from and what it was like there, and how they came to be ravagers of the void.”

“Ah. Well we have been able to interrogate them, but we learned little from them that way.” First Mauve admitted. “The concept of co-operation to evade torture is inconceivable to them. A captured demon will fight constantly to kill or escape until it succeeds or is exhausted to the point of complete immobility, and that is all. We have learned more by various psionic techniques that glean some meager information, and by spying out their communications.

“Here is what we have learned;

“Know that in its original state, a demon is an animal with no conscious self, it has no cares, no worries, no fears, only the instinctive nature to kill and consume. They come from a world that is midway between an inner rocky world and an outer gaseous world in size and composition. It has a huge rocky core even larger than Kellaran, and the pull of weight at the surface is many times that of your world. Everything there must be immensely strong simply to move about, and they move quickly and constantly. Their world also has vast oceans of alien liquids, and a very deep and dense layer of a gas that bears no resemblance to what you call air. The pressure at the surface is extreme.

“It is a completely hellish place, with poles far colder than on either of our worlds, and an equator much hotter than ours. Still, life thrived there in incredible abundance, and all of it vicious and violent and intensely competitive. There were thousands of kinds of life-forms there that were more dangerous individually than demons, and the first ancestors of the demons only survived because they were very adaptable and bred with incredible fecundity whenever possible.

“But like all races, the lucky and capable survive to breed while the unlucky and less capable die, and over time the demons developed considerable intelligence. This intelligence did not give them distinct personalities; they are a very uniform race in their thinking, if highly variable in their physical forms. Compared to us, their thinking is still very primitive in style, despite their intelligence. They have never developed any arts or entertainments, beyond killing and torturing and consuming. They have no loyalty or feeling of family ties, but they have a brutal practicality that allows their society to function in its basic way. The weak obey the strong, or they are punished or consumed.