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Beranabus had a whale of a time in the universe of his father The demons were far more bloodthirsty than humans They could kill each other in ways men had never dreamt of Death didn’t have to be swift either A demon master could torment a lesser demon for decades… hundreds of years… millennia if it wished
Beranabus drifted with delight from one crazy realm to another He didn’t need to sleep ed at an even slower rate than on Earth He was part of a universe ofas he liked
He had to be careful of course He could tame most demons, but some resisted his charms and tried to capture him Beranabus was uneducated, but he wasn’t stupid He knehat pain and suffering were, and while he loved to observe the torment of others, he had no wish to become one of the tortured
That hen he discovered his gift of speed He could run faster than any demon that chased him So, on the occasions where he could not taleefully as he ran, safe in the knowledge that the demon would soon lose interest in his In the De
else to kill
Windoere plentiful Although demons could only cross to the hue, many could travel from one zone to another in their own foul realm Their universe was an endless parade of blood-drenched worlds and galaxies Soer demons could even create infinite, self-contained zones of their ohich soer, unified demon universe
Whenever Beranabus tired of a realm, he searched for aand usually found one quickly He never worried about what he would encounter on the other side Uncertainty and potential peril were all part of the delight of his life
Eventually, inevitably, he stepped through ato the human world He knew he’d crossed universes as soon as he sniffed the air—it was less charged with ed hi tis around him—and he wanted to see what the people were like, how they varied from those he’d known, if they died any differently
In the demon universe, s could remain open indefinitely He assu He spent only a handful of h to realise that de than humans—but when he returned to the spot where thehad stood, it was gone He was stranded, a captive of the world where he had first begun
When Beranabus discovered to his disic were incredibly rare on this world, he travelled with fiery intent, hitching lifts with ar to the furthest reaches of civilisation He was desperate to return to the universe of the fantastical demons
This was the first time Beranabus’s brain stirred actively Until then he had wandered neutrally, observing whatever he chanced across But noent in search of so those he travelled with, deliberately setting out to explore fresh locations full of promise
As his brain took its first developers forward, he unconsciously learnt a feords and h ibberish His mind was still a confused, chaotic country, full of storms and whirlpools But he had taken the first steps towards understanding and intent, and the world—the universes—would never be the saain
Some years later the boy found himself on an island, set at the westernh and established a permanent tunnel Thousands ofthe locals, laying siege to the villages and towns, slaughtering all in their path
Beranabus eagerly trudged around the country in search of the tunnel, ad the torments perpetuated by the Dee to another, a di substantial for the dead hu ould soon be butchered by the deht troubled hiht, it had altered his view of slaughter
Hu was different to what he’d seen in the demon universe On this world, those who survived hed at death, but people here cared about their fa pleasure from their pain It was too… human