Arkay kept his eyes on the ground. He didn’t want to look up, only to see the other Veth staring at him and whispering about him again. They’d been doing that for a while. They all knew what he’d tried to do. They all knew that he didn’t like Kinisis and didn’t want to be with her. And now here he was, about to become her partner. It was going to be a stupid wedding.
But for some reason, everything had been put on hold. Kairos had reappeared, his feathers and scales shaking with terror. He was crying. Kinisis took him inside and locked the door and now everyone was just waiting to find out what was going on. And at the same time, they were judging Arkay.
Someone wandered over. Not wanting to be rude, Arkay looked up to see who it was.
“Iatre.”
“Are you well?”
“No.”
“What did she do to you?”
Arkay took a deep breath. “It’s… complicated…”
Iatre put a hand on his shoulder, then pulled him close, hugging Arkay. This wasn’t normal behaviour for Iatre. Maybe he was just being nice.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“I feel like you’re all judging me… I was adamant I didn’t want to, she takes me away and now I’m saying yes to her…”
“We’re actually more worried about the frantic Dragon God of Time who flew here in tears and was taken into Death’s private quarters…” Iatre explained. “Istoria said she hadn’t seen the Whenvern like that in a very long time, and she’s been here for a very long time herself.”
Arkay sighed, just as a door opened. The Veth all looked up to see who it was.
Kinisis and Kairos stood side by side. Kairos was wearing heavy armour, Kinisis was naked. Kinisis snapped her fingers, ordering the Veth to all gather round so she could speak to them.
“What’s going on?” Arkay quickly asked. “And whatever it is, are you really planning to personally fight it in the nude?”
Kinisis tutted. “No. This is for my own protection. Simply put, while Stasis was studying a sample of Corruption before destroying it, it escaped and infected him and now Stasis is Corrupted and we have to figure out how to save him before it spreads and kill us all.”
The Veth glanced at each other, not sure how to digest what Kinisis had just said.
“So… we have to kill Stasis?” Syklos asked as he summoned himself some armour.
“No, we have to purge the Corruption from him!” Istoria snapped. “If we kill Stasis, we end up free-falling and losing what little stability this universe has!”
“Which means,” Kinisis interrupted, “we need to work out how to save Stasis, rid him of the Corruption then find a way to seal me shut so this shit stops happening.”
“Well you could start by putting some clothes on…” Arkay muttered. “How much time do we have?”
Kinisis counted on her fingers. “Uh…”
“About three hundred and forty hours!” Kairos almost shouted. “I seal him inside the Space Between Spaces but I do not know how long that will hold him! That is, if the Corruption just… controls him rather than killing him…”
The Lady of the Cycle smiled weakly and patted Kairos on the back. “Don’t worry, dear. We’ll sort this out. My best Veth are going to start working on it right now. In the mean time…” Kinisis leaped over to Arkay and dragged him next to Kairos. “You two are going to patrol the universe together and make sure Stasis’s minions don’t bother us, and to make sure he doesn’t… slip through the gaps… Anyway, we got this!”
Satisfied with the plan, Kinisis pranced back inside her private quarters, slamming the door shut behind her.
“I guess we’d better get started then…” Istoria sighed after an awkwardly long silence.