Yisini fluttered around in a cloud of stardust, waiting for the perfect moment to go down and talk to her brother. Normally the Allbirther, the Goddess of Life, would just interrupt whatever the Lord of Death was doing, but he seemed to be particularly busy right now, destroying something that Yisini, weirdly, had no hand in making. At first, Arkadin seemed to have been in a good mood, but as the dust settled around him, the expression on his black and yellow face dulled significantly.
This, Yisini assumed, was probably the best time to talk to him. After all, she couldn’t ruin his mood if his mood had already been ruined.
“Heya, Arky!” Yisini beamed, peering through her glittering cloud. “You busy? Can we talk?”
Arkadin glanced up at the sky, where Yisini was hiding in the clouds. She was absolutely colossal compared to him, and Arkadin had gone and made himself a good 10m tall to appear more intimidating to the local inhabitants he had just murdered. Accidentally. He hadn’t intended on killing all of them.
“Hey, Yisini. I’m not busy… just… confused…” Arkadin turned his attention to the sand that shifted eerily across his clawed feet and blew across his tail. “I’m going to assume you didn’t make this race of… gemstones? I’m really not sure. Either way, they were run by a bunch of tyrants and… when I killed the tyrants, they kinda, uh, took everyone else out with them…”
“Huh…” Yisini shrugged, not really sure what to say. She lowered herself down through the dusty clouds until she could reach the stained glass building Arkadin was standing in. “Oh well. Was probably one of Epani’s abandoned experiments anyway. I actually popped by to tell you a couple of things. I’ve been working on that thing like you asked me to and I’ve run into a roadblock.”
“A roadblock?” Arkadin asked as he began to summon winds, blowing away the dust. He could have just left it all here, but he kinda wanted to give all these dead… gem things some sort of dignified funeral. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, uh, I’m making pretty good progress… but the problem is that… Kenon’s only really using his mind control stuff on, like, the top 5% of the Rethavok population. Everyone else has gone the way of the Vohra, following the guy who’s strongest, because of the Sapiapathy Collapse that Kenon caused. And because Kenon is the strongest guy around and is capable of, well, doing godly stuff, the common population seems none the wiser.”
“So what you’re saying is that a waterborne cure won’t work?”
“It won’t be nearly as effective as I had originally planned…” Yisini trailed off. “On the plus side, since it’s not a complete collapse AND there’s a hierarchy of strength rather than, I dunno, diplomacy or democracy or any other ‘-cy’, not all is lost. If someone proved themselves stronger than Kenon, the Rethavok could potentially flock from him.”
Arkadin tutted. What Yisini was saying wasn’t as bad as he expected, but he also was beginning to understand what Yisini was suggesting. “I can’t just go down there and kick Kenon off his throne. That doesn’t fix the issue because then Kenon will just retaliate in kind…” The Thantophor paused, shaking his head. “And Kinisis would not approve at all. Any time I try anything remotely violent against another deity, it always ends badly for me.”
Yisini though just smiled. “Doesn’t have to be you.”
“What?”
“One of us other deities could-”
“Yisini, no. No fucking way. Plus, you already have your Temthans, Epani has her Vohra and Kairos has whatever the fuck he’s doing with the Kronospasts lately. Stepping in could cause an all-out mortal war and I frankly don’t want to clean up that mess.”
The Allbirther shrugged, coiling around the building and admiring Arkadin as he worked. “Well, there’s other good news. I might be able to reverse the Sapiapathy Collapse. Might. But it will take at least five years. Closer to a decade perhaps. Once it’s reversed, the average vok will see that they’ve been controlled and, maybe, in a couple of decades or so, they’ll wise up and demand democracy again. Until then, I’m gonna be honest with you, bro, Kenon’s got you beat.”
Arkadin hesitated, then sighed, acknowledging Yisini’s words, before returning to work. “I suppose at least it’s… better than nothing”