Arkadin sat on the bed, not sure what to do with himself. It wasn’t his bed. His bedroom in general had been trashed by an errant, feral Life Goddess with an addiction to mind rape and mass murder. Right now, he was sitting in fellow Decayling Retvik’s bedroom, minding his own business.
That Life Goddess was now dead. Arkadin killed her. Mostly in self-defence. But the Life Goddess did deserve it. After all, she was trying to kill him. And everyone else Arkadin cared about. Really, that was the reason why he was sitting in Retvik’s room, so he could have some peace and quiet. Apparently, since Arkadin had killed the Life Goddess, this also meant he was spared from all the cleaning and tidying up.
A knock on the door caught Arkadin’s attention. Retvik was standing in the doorway. He looked hot and sweaty, but somehow wasn’t actually sweating. Little pearls of molten gold ran down his dark grey, glistening skin. Arkadin couldn’t help but look away, blinded by how beautiful Retvik was.
“Uh, are you well?”
Arkadin turned back to Retvik, slightly embarrassed. “Yeah, I’m… as good as I can be, all things considered.”
Retvik reached for a towel that was resting on the chair opposite Arkadin. Arkadin caught a glimpse of Retvik’s body up close. He may have been beautiful at a distance, but his whole body was pitted with tiny scratches. Most of them were healing up, but it was a rather disturbing sight.
“Oh, you can see them.”
“Yeah… what happened?”
Retvik grunted. “Micro tears from superheated ice and metal shards. Rather uncomfortable, but I have come to realise that pain is the only real barrier to my health now. If I ignore that, I can survive anything.”
“Yeah… The pain is hard to get past though…” Arkadin sighed. “I will happily admit that I’m still not past the pain stage yet. You’d think that a two billion year old retard like me…”
Retvik frowned, sitting down with Arkadin with enough force to stop Arkadin from talking. “It is not right to put yourself down so much. You are not a retard. You are not even two billion years old. All things considered… you are technically younger than me.”
“What?” Arkadin blinked. “How the fuck did you come to that conclusion?”
With a shrug, Retvik started patting himself down with the towel, intentionally withholding his answer.
“Retvik, what are you on about?”
“The Arkadin from before the Great Time Dragon War was very different to the Arkadin from after the War with Kairos. After you became a Dessaron, after you experienced existence as a mortal. You said it yourself, you killed yourself to make yourself into Arkay. And Arkay is all that survived after the universe died. Taking the age of 15 that you gave me when you first met me and what the date is now, you are approximately 60 years old. And that is ignoring the fact that, according to Kairos, at some point last year, you killed yourself and reformed into a new you. So, technically, you are about a year old.”
Arkadin didn’t say anything at first. Instead he stared at Retvik. “You know what I mean.”
“I know what you are implying, and I disagree. You have always been too harsh on yourself.”
“It’s not just harshness. I’m… constantly angry with myself because I’ve been, well, slacking off… a lot… and I’ve had… a lot of… sexual thoughts lately. And things like this, things like being attacked because I have a hint of Life Goddess stuff in me… Makes me sad, Retvik.”
“I understand…” Retvik put an arm around Arkadin, then swiftly let go. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”
“For a little bit, yeah.”
“Alright…” Retvik grunted as he got up. “I will let you know when we are done with all the work…”
“Thank you, Retvik.”
“No worries, dear…”