Kairos perched on the windowsill, having flown in from across the universe carrying a bag of ingredients. Despite the fact that he was a large dragon with a 200m wingspan, he seemed absolutely tiny sitting there in the window. For reasons unknown, the owner of the massive house Kairos had flown into had grown even larger, and its occupant, the Allmaker Herself, seemed quite happy about it all.
“So, uh, I got your shopping, but I don’t think I bought enough…” Kairos muttered, peering inside. He had landed in the kitchen window, where Kinisis was busy making and baking things. Upon hearing his voice, Kinisis turned around and beamed with glee.
“Thank you!” the Allmaker patted Kairos on the head with her oversized hand. She took the bag from Kairos, spun it around a few times then muttered a few words, which caused the shopping to expand into a size that fit the rest of the massive house. “I was just thinking about you, actually! I had Yisini and Epani over this morning, chatting about things, I had Arkadin pop by yesterday asking about stuff, and now you’re here!”
“Huh. Coincidence, I guess…” Kairos grunted, taking off from the windowsill and flying inside, looking for something less draughty to perch on. The only space not covered in cooking or baking stuff though was a chair at a nearby table, so that was where Kairos went. “How are the others? I’ve been kinda busy.”
Kinisis shrugged. “Same old. Same as always.”
“And what about Arkadin?”
“What about him?” Kinisis asked back. “He’s staying with you currently, right? You not talking to him?”
“I am, but…” Kairos hesitated. “Kinisis, can I ask you a question?”
The Allmaker had already wandered off, taking her freshly resized box of sugar and mixing it up with a vast amount of butter. “Hm? What sort of question?”
“A particularly mean one.”
“Hasn’t stopped you before.”
“Yes, but this is about you.”
Kinisis paused, curious. “Sure.”
Kairos cleared his throat, then spoke. “Why do we even still have Arkadin? You put so much work and effort into making him, but he is a fucking mess of a being. He is barely fit to be a mortal, let alone a god, let alone a god of death, of all things!”
The Allmaker sighed, going back to her bowl of butter and sugar. She didn’t answer immediately. “That is a tough one to answer, and there are several reasons…”
“Which are?”
“The sunk cost fallacy, firstly. You spend so much time moulding that poor fucker, you want to get your time and effort’s worth out of him. Death gods are incredibly hard to get stable, but we’ve somewhat managed it. And we’re just over 13 billion years into this universe, I’ve learnt from my mistakes about fucking with death gods after they’ve accepted their duties.”
“But…” Kairos stuttered. “You… you knew about Arkadin before he was Arkadin. Heck, I remember bits of the last universe, where he was an annoying little semi-mortal brat.”
“I made mistakes with Arkay. I should have killed and converted him earlier on, but I felt he needed to live life a little. Didn’t quite work out how I had hoped. But I wouldn’t have even needed to use a little preserved mortal had you not constantly broken everything.”
Kairos gasped, completely thrown off guard. “What?”
“As far as you recall, the last universe you were in, you were a time god. But there are hundreds of universes between the last universe and this one where we couldn’t get them off the ground and growing properly. The trouble was that you had no self-control whenever we gave you more than just time to deal with, so you would end up eating universes from the inside out.”
“Uh… what?” Kairos was very confused and actually felt quite angry. “I… I can’t have done that! I am a Time God! I have always been a god of time! How dare you accuse me of being a universe killer! And what does any of this have to do with Arkadin anyway?”
Kinisis remained perfectly calm, happily throwing ingredients into her mixing bowl. “Yep, you are just a time god. You can’t handle any other duty, especially death. Our mistake was trying to make you into a dragon god of time and death and you couldn’t handle it. We erased your memory when it came to all those failed universes so you can concentrate on this universe.”
“But… I… I don’t understand…”
“Arkadin deals with death so you don’t have to.”
Kinisis smiled to herself and went back to mixing ingredients, while Kairos blinked in confusion, trying to understand what he had just been told.
“So… you put up with Arkadin being a mess because if he wasn’t around, we’d be in more of a mess?”
“Basically.”
“…Huh…”
Kairos fell silent, lost in thought. The sound of a wooden spoon hitting a bowl though snapped him back to reality.
“Do you want to lick the bowl?” Kinisis asked.
A smile crept up Kairos’s face. “Yes please…”