Before Daniel and the others was a giant futuristic plaza which became clear as soon as the elevator doors opened they could see it clearly. Talus was enthralled by all of the food courts; his mouth was visibly wide open and drool was pouring from his mouth. Ungar thought to himself; "At some point very soon I need to ask Talus what he knows about the whereabouts of the Philosopher's Stone. I can clearly sense that he has this knowledge." The group went to one of the restaurants that seemed to be some kind of buffet which was perfect for Talus. They first needed to go to some kind of financial withdrawal center to exchange gold and jewels for something along the lines of the credits which were used as currency in this civilization. After they entered the restaurant they saw a man with the head of a slug sitting at a table with a big plate of food prepared before him. As Talus saw this he began to crack every bone in his body while salivating. Popping his neck with his fists. Pulling his neck up vertically and pulling all the segments of his spine upwards you could see all the joints in the back of his next separated one by one, then cracking his knuckles, pulling his fingers, cracking his feet, his wrists, pulling on his own hair and somehow cracking what seemed to be joints in his skull or perhaps joints in his neck that hadn't already been popped. Popping his shoulders, his pelvis, his nose, his cervix, etc.
Daniel looked like he was going to barf but before he could say anything Talus sat at the table and began to quickly devour the food, food was flying all over the table everyone else at the table; Sir Rhyme, Guan-Fu, Narcis, Sarai, Zaiyal, and Daniel all sitting at the tables with their mouths gapped open and only Ungar sitting right beside Talus was sitting there with no emotion and total indifference of Talus's bad manners. "TALUS! Tell us what you know about the Philosopher's Stone. You know something about it. I can feel it tell us all right now," said Ungar. Talus finished off by sucking the marrow from one of the bones of some large animal. Stating with his mouth full; "the Philosopher's Stone. That thing is older than you and you're far younger than I am. What is 40 billion years old now? Nobody knows its true origins but someone claims that a divine all-powerful God who exists above all things created the Philosopher's Stone countless eons ago which would explain it being over 40 billion years old. What more do you know about it? I know you served with Lilith!" said Ungar. "How on earth could you possibly know that?" said Talus. "If it wasn't obvious before it's because I read inside of your mind," said Ungar. Talus stared at his dinner plate for a moment, "well that actually makes sense, so fair enough I'll tell you. It was over 9,000 years ago and I was serving in the army of someone called Lilith. Now we need to go back further than this. It was something like 950 billion years ago and in heaven the apparently icy-cold god was residing over heaven and all of his angels when he introduced something to the congregation of the heavenly realm, it was a soul," said Talus. "I was taught in Catholic School that it was the first human Adam that God introduced, which is also what traditional Islamic and Jewish circles teach as well," said Daniel. "No Adam and therefore the sons of Adam would not come into being for another 800 billion years or so.
The soul as this story goes is much older… So anyway the soul was introduced to the angels and one of the angels Lucifer thought it was a lower form of creation. He long before decided he would rebel against god and this was merely the mental excuse to carry out his rebellion. He convinced many of the angels to join him and enthrone himself as the new god of the universe. He confronted God in battle but was unaware of God's real power. Only in battle did he realize that the form God had congregated with the angels was only an illusion and in truth God was everything and even Lucifer himself was within God's shadow. This was beyond Satan's knowledge, and though he was beautiful and vastly intelligent this was simply beyond his understanding and by the time he realized a tiny glimpse of God's true power, 'if one could even call it that apparently his "power" was so great it rendered the term power relative. It was already too late and Satan was expelled from heaven along with the other angels who rebelled under Satan who would later be known as 'fallen angels,' or the 'demon kings.' Satan was cast into the void what many call hell but it is not a realm of fire and brimstone but rather a spacial void of nothingness which either appears to be all black or all white to some according to legend in accordance with who is viewing it. He has been trapped there ever since for the last 900 or so billion years. The Demon Kings created different beings out of mud, fire and darkness. These were called Demons which were all distorted because they were created without the light of the seal of God's approval. Hence, these beings were distorted abominations who are always either grotesque if they possess form or if not they possess no form," said Talus. "Wait, so where do these beings live?" said the Buddhist monk Narcis.
"They live everywhere, they serve Lilith. Lilith was the second-in-command of Lucifer's rebellion against heaven and God but was not an angel, she was some other kind of other being similar to a nymph in certain earthling mythologies Daniel. In any event she devised creating the Demons, all different types; "Hellspawn, Necromancers, Skin-Walkers, the Jinn or Jinnie, the Agras, the Qilins, the Div, the grotesque beings of the flesh, etc. Some of these demons rebelled against Satan some for noble reasons others for selfish, some of them like your's truly never truly followed him to begin with for what you fools would call selfish reasons. But nonetheless that was at least the original purpose of their creation, and unfortunately for mortals many of them remain loyal servants of Lucifer and Lilith. Lilith, who was someone who wanted to wed me despite me having no gender and therefore I could not consummate her union, still wanted me to serve as viceroy under Lucifer. But I refused, unlike the others I was created out of nothing and was not created by the fallen archangels. I had no interest in her and only in the thrill of battle so I left her but she has scoured the universe looking for the Philosopher's Stone which if broken will release Lucifer to this world once again. Once he is brought back he will destroy this world of creation and once again now that he thinks he has become stronger on equal measure with God he will once again foolishly rebel against his creator but by that point the mortals will be reduced to dust," said Talus. "..." said Daniel. "So now you know, and I can get back to this delicious meal," said Talus. After this was said there was a long pause and nothing was said for a while. "LIAR! You expect us to believe you?!" said Sarai. "That's enough!" said Ungar.
"He speaks the truth. I can feel his heart; he knows he could never lie to me. Though it's also clear he has no interest in lying about such a thing. He does not tell a single lie. This is all true," said Ungar. Everyone looked down in despair; they knew now full well that they were up against the forces of Lord Tep and Daniel's father must pale in comparison to the armies of the fallen angels under Lilith and Lucifer the Angel. Talus continued to pop every joint in his body after he had finished devouring a great quantity of food. As he did so Ungar spoke up; "we need a place to rest up for the night," said Ungar. "Are you feeling tired?" said Talus. "No, I don't sleep at all. My body does not need it therefore I am always awake but the rest of you need to sleep," said Ungar. Talus laughed; "I don't need to sleep but I quite enjoy it, so I think I'll pack it in as well." "Well I guess it's settled then, let's find an inn and settle down for the night," said Zaiyal. So Daniel and the others arrived at an inn for the night and they drifted off to sleep, Zaiyal went on to bizarrely hang himself because he said it was good for his spine. As Zaiyal hung from there you could hear the vertebrae crack one by one and the zen he was feeling as a result of it. Ungar stood in the corner thinking as stated earlier he did not need to sleep. And the others either got into the bed's in the room of the inn or they set up sleeping blankets on the floor.