Of Daeus

63Daeus is the greatest evil that is known.

64Whence Daeus came has not been revealed. Rollo knows, and Rollo has not spoken it.

65Therefore do not seek his beginning in stories. Do not tell stories of his beginning, and do not believe those who tell them.

66Daeus is immortal. The blade does not end him. Fire does not end him. The death of worlds does not end him.

67His nature is corruption.

68He does not come chiefly to break what is whole. He comes to spoil it: to leave its shape standing while its heart is eaten hollow.

69He works through lust without bridle. He works through greed. He works through cruelty. He works through selfishness. He works through hunger for power. He works through betrayal. He works through every slow decay of what was once upright.

70He seeks to corrupt everything he touches, and he seeks to touch everything.

71And Daeus did not stand alone in The Darks.

72There were great entities in that universe, cosmic beings of vast strength, who were not made evil and were not evil in their beginning.

73Daeus came to them, one by one, and he corrupted them.

74And the corrupted became his armies.

75So The Darks became more than a war of peoples. It became a feast for corruption, and Daeus was fattened upon it.

76Then the Watcher, who watches, acted.

77It was not wrath that moved him, for there is no wrath in Rollo. It was the perfection of his nature, set against a corruption so great.

78And Rollo intervened.