Kairos opened his eyes, feeling weirdly refreshed. Had he been asleep? Had he just woken up? He wasn’t normally a being who needed to sleep.
These confused thoughts were swiftly replaced by thoughts of panic. Something was wrong. He couldn’t breathe. But he could breathe. So he started breathing.
But Kairos was a God. The Dragon God of Time to be precise. He didn’t normally need to breathe. He could, but normally it was a totally optional thing.
Once he’d calmed down, Kairos decided to try and stop breathing. To see if the panic came back. It did. So he started breathing again.
After about ten minutes of breathing, Kairos decided to sit up and work out where he was.
Lying by Kairos’s wing was a familiar figure. A little yellow friend. Arkadin was lying rather still, hardly moving at all. Kairos poked him, to make sure that he too was breathing. He was, just about.
“Are you both awake now?” an even more familiar voice echoed from the darkness. The voice of Kinisis, the Goddess of All.
“No…” Arkadin muttered, about a quarter awake. “Gimme a second…”
“No can do!” Kinisis beamed, stepping out from the shadows. Her body was smaller than Arkadin’s, and far more feminine and delicate. A wispy cloak of shadows and stars drifted around her, only just covering her private parts. “I need to talk to you. Right now.”
The Thantophor sat up awkwardly, leaning against Kairos’s wing. “If you needed to talk to us right now, you wouldn’t have knocked us both out…”
Kairos gently patted Arkadin, politely suggesting that he be quiet. “Yes mother, what is it you need?”
Kinisis lifted herself up off the ground, sprouting a pair of beautiful, silver wings. She flittered around her two sons, almost taunting them with her power. After a second twirl, she stopped and landed back where she was, prompting Arkadin to roll his eyes and Kairos to simply remain smiling.
“Sorry, mother, but I’ve got things to kill!” Arkadin snapped as he stood up straight. “Could you please tell us what you need so I can get back to mindless slaughter, as you intended me to do?”
Kinisis smiled, walked over to Arkadin then slapped him across the face. After pausing momentarily, Kinisis then punched him in the stomach. As the God of Death fell to the ground, Kinisis decided to kick him in the side a few times for good measure.
Kairos just continued smiling. He knew better than to do anything else.
“You want to know what I need of you? I want you to both get your ugly noses out of places where they do not belong!” Kinisis roared, her voice echoing through the endless void around them. “I gave you both duties, you should bloody well do them, rather than gallivanting around the universe together being all friendly and trying to stop me from making the alterations I need to make!”
Arkadin shuddered, trying to get back to his feet. “B-but why are you like this, Kinisis? We’re worried about you. I’m worried about you!”
The Goddess of All paused again. “You’re…”
“Yeah…”
With a tilt of her head, Kinisis gave in and decided to explain. “I just feel unsafe lately.”
Kairos glanced at Arkadin, then at his mother. “Then why didn’t you say so?”
“Because saying so makes me feel weak. This current series of alterations, I’m trying to find ways to make this universe stronger. But you two…” Again, the Goddess of all paused and hesitated. Something was going through her mind. Some sort of nervousness, mixed with an insane amount of curiosity. “Have you two ever considered being the same thing?”
The two lesser gods both shook their heads.
“Hm. Maybe I’ll try that…”
“Uh, mum…” Arkadin quickly interrupted. “I don’t think that’s a good idea…”
“Don’t worry!” Kinisis smiled as she patted Arkadin on the shoulder and slowly began to fade away. “It’s just an idea for the future… Nothing to worry about…”