Elksia found it weird how silent everyone was as they marched through the Voidborn vessel, slicing through gold and diamond grunts that were desperately trying to kill them. The Voidborn had fired as soon as they’d seen the small Phantai ship, but the Phantai had retaliated by cleanly blowing up the Voidborn ship’s bridge, freezing the ship’s engines and then docking and boarding the vessel in order to exterminate everyone on board.
They did briefly try diplomacy, the Phantai had sent a message politely asking the Voidborn to leave the area, but no, the Voidborn had decided to shoot straight away, not even bothering to answer.
Still, the silence was weird. The Phantai soldiers they were with had taken out most of the larger Voidborn, while Elksia’s fellow Decayling Akah was holding the rear, deterring and rather eagerly killing any Voidborn entities that had tried to sneak up on the Phantai’s main units. Akah had cleverly created massive ice walls, blocking off the dark corridors and forcing any stragglers towards the blades of the Decay Lords ahead. The other Decayling that had accompanied them, the rather odd Elkay, was fighting alongside the Phantai proper, and his adaptation powers had made him look scarily like them, even if he was a bit short.
Elksia on the other hand, she was on medic duty. Being a Time Drake, she could, well, manipulate time. Not by a lot, but certainly enough to be able to change the tide of battle. Really, all Elksia was doing was altering time strings, reversing smaller injuries and tweaking threads so that Voidborn bullets and blades seemed to always miss. There were a few instances where, no matter how many threads Elksia changed, someone would still get hit, but she had managed to avoid most major injuries. No one had actually asked Elksia to do this, she was supposed to have been helping Akah, but, well, this seemed like a better use of Elksia’s abilities, as well as a good chance to get some practice in.
The silence was still weird.
“Akah?” Elksia asked as she flickered back towards where she was supposed to have been.
“Yes, Elksia?”
“is it me, or is everything really quiet?”
A Voidborn laser zipped by, embedding itself in one of the walls of ice that Akah had erected, but otherwise doing no damage.
“Things are rather quiet, yeah…” Akah tutted. “Quieter than when my mercenary team fought a unit of Rethavok during the stupid Dragon War.”
Elksia smirked, but that smirk quickly faded. She had forgotten that she and Akah had fought on opposite sides of that war. Elksia was one of the four Dessaron, leading a mixed species army against the Whenvern and his Kronospast followers, and most of the Whenvern’s army consisted of enslaved Lanex and their sibling races. Sure, Akah had managed to escape both death and slavery, but Elksia still felt kinda bad.
“I mean, these Phantai, most of them just seem to be giant, heavily armoured Rethavok…” Akah continued, keeping an eye on the corridors ahead of them, freezing up a couple of new ones as the Phantai marched onwards, having cleared this particular sector. “Wouldn’t surprise me if they had some sort of Rethan-Secret-like telepathy they’re not letting us in on yet.”
“Oh…” Elksia hesitated. “That’s… worrying…”
The Time Drake trailed off, then disappeared briefly. She swiftly returned though, and two empty Voidborn shells collapsed by Akah’s feet. However, Akah didn’t immediately thank her, and instead fired an icy spear through a Voidborn that was standing behind Elksia, one that had turned itself invisible.
“Sorry, should have warned you…” Akah frowned. “I must have missed a corridor.”
“Nah, they just phased through the walls!” Elksia was not dissuaded. Again, she darted off, back towards the main Phantai troops, giving Akah a moment to himself. He briefly pondered Elksia’s words, then worked his way backwards, sealing up some ceiling vents and making his own way back towards the Phantai soldiers.
After a moment, Elksia came back, apologising and smiling. “Saw a time thread where that Lightblade guy got stabbed. Had to quickly alter it.”
“Fair enough…” Akah shrugged. “Uh, Elksia, why did you call the Rethan Secret worrying?”
Elksia glanced behind her. The Phantai had just taken out the Voidborn captain and were now just cleaning up. She spotted her fellow Decayling Elkay among them, surrounded by a handful of floating golden daggers and trying to work out how to retract the blades that had grown from his arms. Elksia and Akah both knew that Elkay was a Rethavok, but only Elksia was aware that he had been cut from the Rethan Secret, a low level, almost instinctual telepathic network that united the Rethavok as a single race, a long time ago.
“The old Void Lord guy Kenon, you remember him, right?”
“Yeah?”
“He used the Rethan Secret to make the Rethavok loyal to him.”
Akah blinked, then adjusted the telescopic lens he had over one eye. “I thought he just took over in a standard assassination and coup d’etat?”
“Nope. Basically mind-controlled everyone, and Terry Kenny murdered a lot of the few Rethans who didn’t fall in line. Tenuk and I helped out in Hertany. Retvik, Rethais and Elkay set up a base for free-minded Rethans who managed to escape there, since they were cut out of the secret. All they did was complain about how quiet everything was. Because they couldn’t feel other Rethans.”
“And you think the system the Phantai use could also be hijacked?”
Elksia shrugged. “Maybe? Dunno. These Voidborns seem kinda dumb. Ain’t nothing like the ones we’ve seen. There’s just a fuckton of them…” Elksia fell silent as she realized Elkay was approaching them. She knew better than to mention the whole coup around Elkay, since he still felt awful about the whole thing, even though their universe no longer existed and it was all history now. “Heya, Elkay, you alright?”
Elkay didn’t answer at first, and instead looked down at his arms. “I cannot get the blades to go away.”
“How did you grow arm blades in the first place?” Akah would have looked concerned, but it was hard to tell with that mask of his.
“I think I am slowly turning into one of them. In the last 12 hours I have grown 5cm and my armour feels heavier. Worse, I am picking up on their telepathic messaging despite not specifically trying to do so.”
Before Elkay could voice more of his concerns though, something heavy whacked Elkay across the shoulders. Lightblade, the Phantai leader, patted the Decayling on the back.
“Excellent work you three!” Lightblade beamed, the sword resting across his back fading away in a shower of particles. “You certainly have the Phantai spark for combat! And I am now satisfied that you are not a Voidborn, Shattershield!”
“Oh good…” Akah wanted to roll his eyes but didn’t. “Maybe I should have killed more Voidborn sooner.”
“You all had the opportunity to and you did great! Unender here in particular, you seem to have a rather deep hatred for these beings.”
“Well, one did enslave my kind and destroy our society…” Elkay muttered. “And I believe one did also do the same to Akah’s society as well at some point.”
“That was thousands of years ago, but yes, none of us have a great history with Voidborns. Are we heading back to base now?”
Lightblade nodded, patting Elkay on the back again. “Indeed we are! Unender, Shatterblade, please make your way back to our ship. One of my elite will be setting up the charges so we can disintegrate this vessel, and you do not want to be here when that happens. Threadwarper, can you walk with me, please?”
“Why?”
“I would like to talk to you. In private.”
Elkay and Akah both bowed slightly, then headed off as requested. Elksia watched them, smiling to herself as she noticed Elkay had worked out how to sheathe his new arm blades. Lightblade then started leading Elksia down the same hallway, but he wasn’t nearly as heavy-handed as he had been with Elkay. In fact, he seemed completely unwilling to touch Elksia at all.
“Is something wrong?” Elksia asked.
“Somewhat… Why is a female Time Drake like you working with Decay Lords? And, more importantly, why do you have a baby Life Goddess with you too?”
“Uh, well, me and Retvik have been best buddies for, like ever. When the universe went kablooey, his boss Galyn offered to look after us. Kinda didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“You didn’t join the Time Drake Consortium or the Kronothrax?”
Elksia shook her head. “Didn’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“I wanna be with my friends.”
Lightblade looked Elksia up and down. “And I assume that Lifetaker feels similarly?”
“More so. Her mum was a horrible being who abandoned her as a baby. Phovos didn’t really learn she was a Life Goddess until, like, she got made into Kinisis’s favourite pet Guardian. And by then she’d spent a thousand years as a mortal or something.”
“Lifetaker… Phovos is a direct descendent of the Final Mother?”
“Um… You mean Kinisis? Yeah. She ain’t happy about it though.”
“Indeed. Flamebearer and Souldrainer made that clear to my dear Voidblade when he questioned them…” Lightblade sighed. “Either way, it has been a pleasure fighting alongside you today, Threadwarper. You are a very talented and unique being, even among Time Drakes.”
Elksia grinned. “Really?”
“Really!” Lightblade smiled back, before picking up his pace. “We should leave now. Would you like to see some fireworks?”
The fledgling Time Drake nodded. “We gonna blow this ship up?”
“Indeed. And, hopefully, if you decide to stick around, there will be far more fireworks to come…”
Elksia blinked, but went back to smiling. “You know what? I’d like that! This has been fun!”
Lightblade very lightly patted Elksia on the shoulder. “It has. I cannot wait to see more of you all. You Thantir are so… unusual…”