“I cannot believe that we are all agreeing to this…” Rethais sighed. He and a handful of other leaders were putting themselves some food at the completely open and magically refilling canteen. While Kohra, the tiny Kronospast leader, was helping himself to way too much ice cream, Agapia and Ver, the Temthan Empress and Vrekan King, had been wanting to try some of the fancy, foreign cuisines in front of them. Rethais was only there because he wanted some plain bread, and had a lot on his mind.
“You seem so surprised, deary!” Agapia smiled. “The Allbirther is offering us paradise and you blink?”
“I’d be blinking if I were in his shoes!” Kohra had finished putting himself his meal. A massive bowl filled with three flavours of ice cream, topped with caramel and little colourful sparkles. “The Rethavok had a Void Lord controlling them. Of course Rethais is uncertain! Heck, I’m not 100% in on this either, but from where I stand, with so few Kronospasts left, this is basically a miracle for us.”
“Speaking of Kronospasts…” Rethais muttered, glancing over the selection of bread rolls and picking the plainest one. “If you do not mind me asking, Lord Kohra, why is your sibling representing the Vohra?”
The Kronospast paused abruptly, nearly dropping his ice cream. “How do you… know that?”
“He smells a bit like a Kronospast?” Ver suggested. “I thought it was because you put his scent on the Vahrga though.”
“You are not the only telepaths here. But also, I was already aware, as I have had conversations with your other sibling Tenuk and my own brother,” Rethais grunted, ripping open the bread with his bare hands, then grabbing a nearby knife to spread butter inside it. “I assume he is here though because the Vohran queens are quite immobile?”
“Yeah, basically…” Kohra nodded. “Levik is the highest ranked Vohra that can, well, move.”
Kohra’s explanation and the conversation in general had caught the attention of Levik himself, who had stomped over and made himself known.
“Are you judging me, Rethavok?” Levik snarled, his claws scratching the ground. While the two beings were similarly sized, Levik seemed more imposing, mostly because his armour was much busier and more segmented.
“No,” Rethais tutted. “Not at all. I am actually both surprised and impressed. Would have had me fooled had my siblings not spoken highly of you.”
“I… I… Wait, I thought you only had one sibling?” Levik changed the conversation.
“General Elkay was… distantly related to Retvik and myself. But I spent most of my life working alongside him, so I considered Elkay my sibling too.”
“Elkay was…” Levik trailed off, seemingly relaxing a little. “What… happened to him?”
“I wish I knew.”
The conversation was interrupted by Agapia putting her arms around both Levik and Rethais.
“I hate to break up this weird family reunion via lost siblings, but I really must ask, since all of you were once pawns of the various other deities and this has literally just occurred to me: are you all willing to serve Allbirther Yisini despite your kinds’ pasts?”
“You say that as if we willingly wanted to be controlled by Kenon…” Rethais growled a little. “And nothing in these documents says we are serving Yisini specifically, yes?”
“Well… no…” Agapia frowned. “But we will be upping our worship!”
“Yeah, you maybe, but we won’t be!” Kohra tutted loudly. “After all, it’s the gods that got us into this mess in the first place, and now they are bribing us to forgive them. I’ll admit, we’re all beaten and bloodied enough to accept Yisini’s offer, but I’m not going to thank them for fixing a problem they created!”
The other beings around Kohra nodded in agreement. All of them except for Agapia.
“Is She really to blame?” the Empress eventually asked.
“They all are!” Levik growled. “From the Whenvern attacking the Allbirther, the Allbirther attacking the Thantophor, the Panelix spying on her siblings, the Void Lord invading, the Allmaker using the Thantophor as the nuclear option and the gods’ arguments from the ruins, their actions have not made things easy for us!”
Agapia sighed, accepting that maybe she was wrong. “Well, when you put it that way, I guess you are right. But we are all still… accepting Her offer, yes?”
The group glanced at each other. Eventually, they all muttered in affirmation.
“Yes, we are…”