“Hey, congrats on becoming a Decay Lord finally!”
Arkay read the message a couple of times, before deciding that the message probably wasn’t meant for him. He’d been a fully fledged Decay Lord for at least a couple of months now, so the message was clearly out of date. That being said, the name of the person who had sent the message seemed… oddly familiar.
“Hey, thanks, but I think you have the wrong contact details…” Arkay typed a reply and sent it, not expecting to hear anything else. To his surprise though, he almost immediately got a new response.
“Oh, is this not Arkay at phovos dot net?”
Arkay blinked. That was his contact address. The one he’d picked. Not long after he’d been signed up as a Decayling, Vikalos had given him a list of pre-populated domain names, told him to pick one and that, alongside his name, would become his contact address, so other beings could get in touch if they needed to. Out of the thirty domains available, the only one that stood out was ‘phovos.net’, which Arkay immediately picked. After all, he didn’t want something too obvious, but he also wanted something easy to remember.
With a frown, Arkay checked the sending address. Even more surprisingly, this individual was using the same domain as he was. The contact address was eerily similar, just shorter.
“Uh, it is.”
“So congrats then!”
“I became a Decay Lord a while back though.”
“Late congrats then.”
Arkay sighed, then typed a question of his own. “Who are you?”
“Who am I?”
“Yeah, who are you and how did you get my contact address?”
There was a pause. The being on the other end was typing. Arkay checked their messenger profile, but there weren’t any pictures of the being in question. And information like age and location meant very little. Apparently they were about the same age as Arkay, and their biography read somewhat similarly to the one Arkay had scribbled out on his own profile. A simple note saying “I’m not a life goddess, stop asking me about it.”
Finally, a long paragraph of text appeared. A vast explanation.
“Was kinda hoping you’d remember, but I guess Kinisis really did completely scramble your brain. We used to be best friends back in the universe we were born in, as members of the K-Class Ksa, serving General Elkay. Life was hectic as fuck, we had an awful time and you unfortunately died really young. Rather than dying though, Kinisis kidnapped us and made us into her loyal servants, forcing us to be her little fuckbois and overall really utterly fucking us up. Tried to be close to you but it was difficult with Kinisis in the way, and we ended up going our separate ways too many times even though we loved each other. When that bitch though stopped fighting corruption, you tried to stay and fight it, and I evacuated with a bunch of other Veth. Kinda ended up being a death god in a mini universe for a bit before I moved on to becoming a Decay Lord and always wondered what happened to you, so when I heard Kinisis broke another universe, I did some digging and realised you were alive. I used to go by the name Teekay Theanon, but now I just call myself TK.”
Attached to the message was a picture of this TK. They looked… almost exactly like Arkay. But they had light grey skin and glistening orange and silver crystal armour.
Suddenly, everything clicked. Arkay stared dumbfounded at the screen, not really sure what to say.
“You’re… alive, Teekay? I was… told no one else had survived my… our original universe…”
More typing. A new message appeared. “Tbh I’m not surprised Kinisis lied to you. Or remembered that a bunch of us Veth left, rather than staying and getting corrupted. Probably didn’t want her favourite little pet getting any funny ideas.”
“Probably…” Arkay typed back, still rather shocked. “But at least I’m pretty much free from her now!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I’m free from her AND Kenon.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d you manage that?”
Arkay hesitated, before shrugging. What harm was there in telling the truth?”
“I killed Kenon.”
“Good. He was an asshole. Let the universe get corrupted same way Kinisis did. So you’re doing better now?”
“Yeah, much better. What about you though?”
A small smiley face appeared. “Oh, I thought you’d never ask…”