Kai Demari
| Species | Gorilla |
|---|---|
| Affiliation | The Rewakan |
| Home | Varaar |
| Weapons | An axe |
| Status | Deceased |
| First appearance | A Sacred Tale Collection |
Kai Demari is a gorilla of the Rewakan, one of the five gangs that govern Varaar, and the last thing standing between Aero Ellisvat and the bedroom of Jensaad, Aero's former mentor, on the night Aero came to steal back the Heart of the Kella.[1] He and Jensaad are the only members of the gang the Collection names, aside from the hound Rhazgol, and Aero kills him with the Viper at the foot of the compound's largest building.[1]
Appearance
Kai is a gorilla, and the story introduces him as a mountain-sized one. Had it been daylight, the narration says, no sun would make it around his body; he brought shadows with him wherever he went.[1] His back is so hunched that his head hangs below his shoulders.[1] A silver hoop dangles from his septum, and it jiggles when he snorts.[1] He fights with an axe, which he drags along the ground behind him so that it carves up the sand.[1]
Personality
Kai is humourless and says so by not laughing. Aero's jokes bounce off him: told he has forgotten his manners by tossing a man around without saying hello, he answers only that Aero is no longer welcome inside the walls, and his reply to the observation that he has just asked a question twice is "Do you take me for a fool?"[1] His threats are plain and unhurried. He tells Aero not to think for a moment that he will not slit his throat and leave him to bleed out, and that he would take great pleasure in doing so.[1]
He also does his job properly, which is what kills him. Having backed an armed man into a wall he pauses to observe "You're cornered" and to demand a surrender rather than swinging, and the pause is long enough for Aero to bring the loose rocks above them down and to come through the dust with a sword.[1]
Background
Kai and Aero Ellisvat knew each other well before that night. Kai recognised Aero on the ground in the dark by his scream, and Aero had known the ape far too long to be intimidated by him.[1] Nothing else of their history is recorded, nor is Kai's rank in the gang, nor how long he had guarded the compound.
The Rewakan keep a guarded hideout in the depths of the canyon behind a spiked wall and a garden of broken glass, patrolled by goons and by the hound Rhazgol.[1]
Story
The Heart of the Kella
Aero came over the wall by night, spat cactus needles dipped in rhinespire into three guards on his way through the compound, was mauled by Rhazgol and dropped the hound with a needle of his own.[1] He had one foot on the brickwork of the largest building when something heavy landed on his shoulder and knocked him off the wall.[1]
Kai stood over him and asked what he was doing there. The exchange that followed ran to threats on one side and jokes on the other until Kai swung the axe in a circle, grazed Aero's shirt and pushed him back to the wall.[1] Aero, who had already looked up at the loose rocks piled above them and the boulder holding them back, told him that a man who knows his own home is never cornered, poked the boulder with the Viper, and let the rockfall raise a cloud of dust.[1] He came through it and drove the sword into Kai's chest.[1]
Kai stood motionless, looking down at the emerald hilt jutting out of him. When Aero pulled the blade out he stumbled backwards clutching the hole, told him through the blood in his mouth that he would pay for it, and collapsed hard enough to send a tremor through Aero's boots.[1] Aero wiped the blade on his shirt and went back to the wall.[1]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
An unnamed gorilla of the Rewakan gang caught up with Aero at the Avonbourn in Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened and threw him across the bar. His grievance was that Aero had taken his brother's life, his brother having been doing his job guarding the Rewakan's territory, and then taken Jensaad's.[2] That is the order of the two killings in "The Heart of the Kella", and Kai is the only Rewakan Aero kills on the way to Jensaad, but the books never name the brother and never say that the two gorillas are related to each other rather than to some third guard.[1][2] The gorilla drugged Aero and Reagan Hideaway with rhinespire and took Aero to Varaar Colosseum for trial.[2]
Relationships
Aero Ellisvat fights him like a man continuing an old argument. Aero pouts and asks whether he is hurting Kai's feelings, Kai calls him Ellisvat and tells him to quit playing games, and the whole exchange ends in one thrust.[1] Aero's apology afterwards was addressed to a dead man: he said he was sorry, then told him that the bite of the Viper is no laughing matter.[1]
Behind the scenes
The cast list at the front of A Sacred Tale Collection gives the name as Dee-mar-ee, under the heading for Volume One.[3] Neither novel's guide carries it, and Kai appears nowhere outside The Heart of the Kella.[3][4][5]
The plate printed immediately before the confrontation shows a slim swordsman in a white shirt and sash bracing against a towering figure with a huge double-bladed axe on open ground. No figure in any of the Collection's plates is named in the image, and this one is drawn without the ape features the prose gives Kai.[1]