The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2 novel Chapter 42

Part 8

“I hate them Father.” Reggie stated grimly. “We’ve relived a lot of Somonik’s memory of the first demon war, with enough fidelity to feel like we were there. The demons are the worst thing in reality. They’re pure evil, there’s not a trace of good in them anywhere. They were so mean and so foul and so intentionally horrifying… Well anyway they were. Even if they never hurt any of us or The Triax, that won’t matter to me. I’ll still want to kill them to get revenge for everything they did here before.”

“I see.” Mark nodded again.

“You’re not answering his question.” Helemia told Reggie with some intensity. “Was vengeance part of the prophecy? I think it was. I’ve Read myself for when you got it, and I got it from you when you got it. If you do the same, you’ll see that there was an emotion to it. I could almost feel the emotion of killing them, and it felt like revenge.

“And besides,” she continued to Mark, “I hope that we get them all before they can hurt any of us too, but we all know that we’d have to be unbelievably lucky for that to happen. Maybe they are just a wandering horde of minor demons making their way through the void, who don’t know about the other demons that got beat here before. The Triax said they attacked a helpless world with no thinking people on the way here, which I think kind of goes with the ‘wandering horde’ idea.

“But we don’t believe it for a second.” She paused and looked around, meeting every eye there with the strange intensity of her gaze. “Me an’ Reggie are pretty certain that the demon homeworld sent this horde to get revenge for us beating the last one, and so are all of you. They’re coming through the void because we already know how to wreck the gate they used to get here last time. And if that’s the case, I doubt there’s even one minor demon in that rock. It’ll be full of billions of greater demons and those DemonLords that The Triax told us about. It doesn’t make sense to bring any weaklings along for all that way, unless they need ‘em for food. And I doubt that’s the case, since they just ate a whole world on the way here.

“And we think we’re all being incredibly stupid. That is, Reggie and I can’t believe we’re all just waiting for the demons to get closer! We should be out there killing them now, all our gods and the Triax at least, and the rest of us as soon as possible! It sure seems like all the preparation that the people of Kellaran are doing is for the defensive war after the demons get here! No one is really preparing for war in the void except the gods and the Triax! And that’s stupid! Just as almost all war has been fought in the air ever since it became practical, so now all of us should be ready to fight in the void! If we’re bound to Kellaran while the demons attack us from the void, we’re as helpless as a deer being attacked by a dragon!”

“It’s easy to think that way.” Quewanak nodded. “The possibility that the demons are indeed the terrible and forewarned force that we fear they are is what prevents The Triax from attacking them now, or long before now, for that matter. The Triax want all of us in our alliance to be able to strike against the demons together, to minimize the chance that they’ll be overwhelmed.

“Beyond that, the raw power for magic comes from the sun, and wizards’ magic only comes from the energy of the sun that’s been absorbed and re-radiated by certain rocks on Kellaran. Most spell-casters are helpless once they’ve expended their power, and when they’re far from Kellaran, there’s nowhere to get any more. Only the unicorns, the gargoyles, and a few of the hidden races from Xervia utilize the power of the Source directly and purely; even dragons get half their power from the heat of the stone. And at the immense distance the demons are from the sun now, the Source supplies only a very tiny fraction of the power it delivers to Kellaran.

“We think that even the gods might derive most of their power from the sun, and before the Triax arrived, none of our gods had ever ventured any further from Kellaran than the closest of the outer worlds. That was far enough for them to confirm that Kellaran is the only thing circling our sun that has life, and there was no reason to go any farther. At the distance that the demons are now, even the gods might be severely restricted in their ability, due to the power required to go there and the weakness of the Source there.