Chapter 1: These Aren't The Life Forms You're Looking For.

The small creature was squealing as he wrapped it progressively tighter in his embraces. There was no point in wasting his void energies for something as insignificant as this frail animal. The barbed texture of his upper appendages rasped against the hairless beast like sandpaper, and was scraping the skin off the flesh, the flesh off the bones, the bones into dust. Its metal casing could not defend it against his grasp. He observed its pitiful, failing responses as its body was crushed, organs failing and limbs snapping, until there was nought remaining but a mangled husk of what was once alive. Its crude metallic weapon lay in the grass where the "human" had dropped it after it had been caught, but Vel'Koz had seen many like it in his time in Valoran. It was nothing new to him.

'Hmmm. A standard reaction to bodily destruction.' Vel'Koz noted idly.

He let the corpse drop to the grass below with a resounding, meaty thump, having no further use for it. What else could it possibly teach him? All of these feeble creatures acted the same. They may appear different physically, of course, but to the huge purple void monster there was no major biological difference. They all ran; they all screamed; and they all died. Some fought back as they were caught, and some understood they were lost. He didn't find joy in the slaughter, yet nor was he repulsed by beholding their death. It was the information that their bodies contained for which he lusted…

Yet he had exhausted this resource. There was nothing left for him here.

"What is my purpose now?"

He pondered. He was disturbed by the fact that this was the only question he had ever encountered that could not be solved by disintegrating an object: that was the only method he'd known that could sate his hunger. Ever since he'd discovered the rift between this new world and the void and entered into the harsh light of what the most prolific indigenous species called "the sun", he had captured, destroyed and examined all he had come across, and had discovered a novel piece of information each time he had. He had been particularly intrigued by the significant intelligence of the "humans", but even their civilized lifestyle eventually become droll and uninteresting, their wars petty, their cities identical.

He had even found a consistent range of values for their melting points.

So it was that he came to the conclusion of discovering a new purpose in life. He could not return to the void: whilst he knew how to summon a void rift and travel through, there was even less left for him in the darkness of his home than in this bright world. However, he could not simply give up his search for information: it was all that he had ever craved. There must be something new for him to discover somewhere on this world: he simply had to search for it.

He must know more.