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.”
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
what we have
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
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
very primitive in style, despite their intelligence. They have never developed any
of eons of existence with gradually increasing intelligence and a very slow domination of their world, the demons developed the ability to use a kind of magic. We have no idea how it works, but it appears to not be powered
everything they could eat on their world, and most of them died off from starvation. They eat each other when there is no easier prey, but without other food sources, their numbers diminish quickly. When most of them were gone, the life of their world recovered somewhat, then they recovered and stripped it bare and died off again, and this became a cycle that was repeated
void. Some wandering hordes still obey the most powerful DemonLords on their homeworld. Certainly the hordes operating in the void relatively
developed into a few varieties that grow so quickly and ubiquitously and tenaciously that they thrive despite the constant consumption of a population of demons that covers almost all
and very, very powerful. None of them could kill any of the others without being killed, and if one orders their horde to attack another’s, those two hordes would certainly be decimated, and the other three ruling lords would slaughter the survivors and the
their homeworld is. We have studied their travel through the void and tried to deduce their initial point of origin, but it is impossible because they have been ravaging the void for so long that many of the wandering