Kairos shook off the ash and snow from his back as he landed on the platform that led into his crystal palace, one of the many shimmering abodes Kairos had scattered across the universe. He had been dealing with a weird time anomaly on top of a mountain that had a tired, bored Thraki sitting on top of a stone obelisk staring at it. The whole situation had gone pretty smooth, but the Thraki had gone on about strange philosophical nonsense that Kairos honestly didn’t really care about. Now he was home though, those questions and thoughts were beginning to rise back up again.
Those thoughts were not about Kairos himself though. Things like mortality, morality, things like that. Normally Kairos didn’t care at all, but he had recently been sharing his living spaces with his brother, who had been… acting weird lately.
Something creaked behind Kairos. He shifted his weight to see what it was, turning around on the large balcony. In hindsight, Kairos should have made the entrances to his homes bigger, so he could more easily land and move around, but that didn’t matter right now, because he had just caught a glimpse of his errant brother. Arkadin could be seen dipping around a corner, wrapped up in a heavy woolen blanket.
Rather than leave him alone and ignore him, like he had done regularly over the last few weeks, Kairos decided to shrink himself down a bit and follow the Thantophor, seeing what he was up to. Kairos had kindly given Arkadin a room and some space in the back of each of his crystal palaces (only the crystal ones though, the other ones were out of bounds and Kairos wasn’t THAT charitable) but he had not seen Arkadin at all. Sure, the places were all clean and tidy, if a bit dusty, but they never actually interacted.
Arkadin’s bedroom was strangely cold, as Kairos noticed as he peered into the room. The Thantophor was just lying in bed, not really doing anything at all.
“You alright, mate?” Kairos asked.
The Thantophor pulled the blankets over himself, hiding away. “I’d like to be left alone, please.”
Kairos grunted, not doing as he had been asked. “Is this about Kenon?”
“Yeah. I don’t want to talk about it though.”
“Why not? You can’t hide in here forever, you know. We’ve got stuff to do. Godly stuff.”
Arkadin grunted, remaining hidden under the sheets. A black, inky hand could be seen pulling pillows onto himself. “Universe didn’t care when I was drifting unconscious for a week. Death deals with itself mostly. So does time, mostly.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, well… it’s kinda gotten worse for me. I’m trying but it’s so much worse. Like I don’t even know what I am right now.”
Kairos blinked, heading deeper into Arkadin’s room. “What do you mean by that? You know exactly who you are. You’re Arkadin, the Thantophor.”
With a growl, Arkadin kicked the blankets, cushions and sheets off of himself. He snarled, then revealed his body to Kairos. Or rather, what was left of it.
“Oh, fucking really?” Arkadin sneered, most of his yellow arm and leg plating having disappeared, replaced with what looked like black flames and dark scales. His chest and head plating were still present but had an odd off-gold sheen to them and a pair of black horns had sprouted underneath the head plate. Limp, semi-skeletal wings hung off Arkadin’s back, almost as useless as the thin, tattered tail that drooped on the ground.
Kairos tried to hold in his surprise but let loose a small gasp. “What… what happened?”
“When you have all your favourite things taken away from you, you tend to not look after yourself. Combined with having lost my favoured race and a complete lack of prayers… I’m basically fading away.”
“We are universal constants tho-”
“We’re the embodiments of the universal constants of time and death. Those things are constant, you and I are not. Or at least I am not. I am just a conscious mind keeping an eye on the eternal decay of all things.”
Kairos shook his head. “Embodiments, constants, doesn’t matter, you shouldn’t be falling apart like this! I am taking you to see Kinisis, right now.”
“But-”
“No buts!” Kairos grunted as he picked up the nearest piece of fabric and threw it at Arkadin to cover himself up. “We’re going right now!”