“This is awkward…”
Galyn checked the console, then redid his calculations. For the seventh time, he had come to the same conclusion.
“What do you mean?” Arkay asked, not really sure what Galyn was doing. As far as he could tell, they needed to create an anchor, a specific set of coordinates in four-dimensional space, to allow themselves to be teleported to the Decay Lord central bastion known as Deathven. Arkay had an idea how to calculate this himself, but Galyn insisted on doing it.
“The best location for a teleportation anchor is… near your old universe.”
“Oh.”
“Like, very, very close to your old universe.”
“Oh…”
Galyn glanced down at Arkay. “I can try and find a different location, but this entire sector has a lot of anomalies which throw things off.”
Arkay sighed, then frowned, then straightened himself up. “It’s fine.”
“It does not seem fine. Is there something you want to say?”
“No.”
Galyn tutted. “I know you had some difficult conversations with Litvir and Retvik. And I understand that all of this has been very hard for you to process. If I can make this a little easier for you by calculating a new anchor, I will do that. But I need you to speak up and say what you are thinking.”
“I appreciate the thought, but it’s fine. The sooner we get going, the better. If we just hang around, I’ll just lose my desire to cooperate.”
The elder Decay Lord looked Arkay up and down some more, then returned to the consoles, tapping out various calculations. His calculations however were not giving him much hope.
“Seriously, you don’t need to fuck around on my behalf. Plus, if it means travelling to some other, far off location, chances are we’ll just get into trouble again. I mean, we were just doing really basic navigational work when those slavers came along and wanted to use me as a breeding factory.”
Galyn stopped what he was doing and stared at Arkay. “Is that… what they wanted to do?”
“Well, they were in the business of capturing and selling lower deities to desperate Life Goddesses. Having an entity that they believed could breed more lower deities would have printed money for them.”
“Are you… alright?” Galyn’s eyes widened. “No wonder you have been unhappy, that must have been very traumatic, and you never brought it up.”
Arkay shrugged. “I’m fine. It’s happened before. I’m going to get over it. That’s why you’re sending me off separately in the first place.”
“True…” Galyn drifted off for a moment, before sighing. “I am sorry, Arkay. I failed you. I did not do enough to protect you, I did not properly accommodate for you.”
“It’s not your fault though. I mean, I didn’t think the whole fucking omniverse would want me dead, because Kinisis fucked with my godly genetics.”
“Yes, but still…” Galyn frowned. “I could have-”
“You did what you could with limited resources, dealing with a little asshole with too much power. Really, I’m lucky I even got this chance, considering that you lot originally sent me off to some other place and I only got out because it turned out I wasn’t even there.”
“I… I forgot that happened…” Galyn frowned some more. “You really are a… mess…”
“Yep.”
Both Galyn and Arkay fell silent.
“I’ll be in good hands though, right?” Arkay eventually asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“Alright…” Arkay smiled a little. “Use whatever teleporter coordinates are easiest then. If it’s near… home, then maybe I can say bye to a few people…”