A knock on the door woke Retvik from his slumber. He’d forgotten that he had fallen asleep on the big sofa in the living room, and his friends had all just somewhat moved around him, not wanting to disturb the colossal, armoured, snoozing beast. Thankfully, someone else was up and around to see who was knocking, but a squeal of surprise woke Retvik up completely, forcing him to sit upright.
“Arkaaaay!” Nyssi squeaked as she dragged the Thantophor inside, slamming the door shut behind her. She pulled Arkay to the sofa opposite Retvik and sat him down. “How are you?”
The Lord of Decay smiled weakly. In his hand was a large, reusable shopping bag, filled with drinks, packets of crisps and five individually wrapped sandwiches. “I’m doing… alright, I guess. Could be better though. I bought you guys some lunch.”
“It is lunch time?” Retvik asked as he rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on everyone around him.
“1:24pm, to be precise…” Arkay answered, fishing around in his bag. He pulled out each sandwich and matching drink and laid everything out on the table. Each sandwich was labelled with everyone’s name. Kayel and Tenuk appeared from upstairs and joined Retvik, Nyssi and the Thantophor on the sofas. “You guys doing alright? You look tired.”
“Had a tough fight yesterday!” Tenuk did his best to smile. “Kinda wore myself out though, I’ve never shapeshifted into something so large before. Also Kayel kinda fell a pretty long way.”
“Who were you fighting?”
“The Fangs of the Whenvern.”
Arkay blinked in surprise and confusion. “But they’re, like, the second best team after Retha Squad One!”
“Yeah, so?” Tenuk seemed unbothered. “We won. Wasn’t even that hard. Retvik fights Thraki all the time, and since I can fly and Kayel can shadowjump, we kinda just dropped Retvik on one of them. Unfortunately we also kinda dropped Kayel and kinda… failed to catch him.”
Arkay turned to Kayel, who also seemed unbothered. “You alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Was kinda painful hitting the ground from that height, but, eh, I’m over it…” Kayel grunted. “Also worked out I can just shoot pigeons to get rid of my Phantasma adrenaline pangs…”
“Oh that’s good!” Arkay smiled. “Just don’t offer the corpses to me. I don’t accept offerings of dead stuff, apart from Banikan temple sacrifices, and even then, those all go to a hole in one of Sini’s labs where she dissects them. Glad you can release that unwanted energy though.”
“Also means I get a nice supply of fresh meat!” Nyssi beamed, grabbing the sandwich with her name on it. She was surprised to see that the bread was actually composed of two thin slices of breaded poultry. “Kayel’s very accurate.”
“I’m only accurate when I spend time lining up the shot. It’s kinda different from mid-battle accuracy, where I could definitely be better. But eh, I’ll get there.” Kayel turned back to Arkay. “You though, you kinda seem a bit glum.”
The Thantophor tutted. “I have a lot on my mind right now. Like, way more than normal. A lot of stuff’s gone on in the last week or so, and I’ve not been able to sit down and unpack it all.”
“Is that why you are here?” Retvik asked, finally joining in the conversation. “Also, you three really should not have let me sleep in like that…”
“Eh, you looked cute…” Kayel shrugged.
“Me? Cute?”
“Yeah. Anyone can look cute when they’re sleeping and having pleasant dreams.” Again, Kayel turned back to Arkay, this time also reaching for his sandwich. “Anyway, we’re your friends, Arkay, you can talk to us, right?”
“About some of it, yes…” Arkay sighed. “Although part of it is totally a fuck up on my part. Accidentally used godly money to pay for a bunch of mortal money things, and now my tax payments look suspicious because I appear to have more money than I claim, and now I gotta freeze all my accounts in general until things look normal again…”
The four mortals all stared at Arkay, not quite sure what he was on about.
“You pay taxes?” Kayel whispered.
“Yeah, to the Skyan government. Well, not me, Arkay, the Thantophor, but me, Aray Aspidon, A-Class remote archiver and transcriber.”
“You have a full Skyavok identity?” Kayel’s whispers turned into a rather loud gasp.
Arkay simply nodded. “Yeah, I have a normal, mortal identity. Always have done, have to make a new one every century or so, helps keep me grounded and reminds me why I’m doing all this stupid death god stuff. But honestly, that’s not really the thing that’s bothering me. There’s two things and both of them are… hard to explain.”
“We have all day…” Retvik grunted as he bit into his sandwich. There was garlic mayonnaise in the pig and poultry sandwich, something Retvik secretly loved. “Surely it cannot be that hard to explain. We may be mortals but we are not stupid. Thank you for the sandwiches, by the way.”
“No worries…” Arkay trailed off, collecting his thoughts. “You’re right, Retvik. You’re not dumb. But one of the two problems is pretty awkward.”
“When we met you in the Gold Suite, you admitted that you’ve had sex with the Whenvern!” Tenuk interjected. “Can’t be that awkward!”
“Oh, Tenuk, you have no fucking clue!” Arkay didn’t mean to hiss, but he did anyway. “You really just… Ugh… You want awkward? Alright, here’s one awkward thing for you. After I dealt with that Voidborn that threatened to kill the universe last week, we got a visitor that was going from universe to universe, selling bits of bones of its bones, because it was descended from an ancient strain of Corruption and that meant its DNA could kill most other strains of Corruption, and it turned out the bastard was related to me! I share a mother with a fucking Corruption!”
Tenuk shrank in his seat, silently taking back what he’d said. “How… does that even work?”
Arkay grunted, not answering at first. He took his drink and downed it in one go. “My mother was a mortal. He did NOT have a good life, because he had a genetic fluke which meant he could produce viable children with pretty much anyone or anything. And, somewhat ironically, I was the ONLY one of his seven kids that had a mortal father as well.”
“You have six siblings?” Nyssi asked, leaning forward with curiosity. “Care to tell us about them?”
Arkay shook his head. “I hardly remember them. Elkay didn’t even remember who he was until I reminded him of his own name.”
“What about your mother?” Kayel added his own question.
“What about him?”
“What was he called?”
The Thantophor fell completely silent.
“You don’t know?” Kayel asked, feeling slightly concerned.
“I do know. It’s… even more awkward…” Arkay closed his eyes, then tutted. “Let’s not talk about my family from two universes ago and instead talk about the fact that the universe nearly ended last week. Some bastard Voidborn broke in, dragged Kairos, Epani and Sini out of the universe then climbed back in to try and kill me. But I tortured then murdered the fuck out of him and got to taste pure, unadulterated, unsuppressed power, and I didn’t even try and do anything with it. Just killed the Voidborn, brought my fellow deities back into the universe and just gave them their powers back…”
Kayel hesitated, then put his arm around Arkay in a bid to comfort him. “Sounds absolutely terrifying, but it also sounds like you did the right thing. I don’t know what a Voidborn is but it sounds pretty bad.”
“It is. And it’s all made worse by the fact that I’ve not been able to contact Litvir and Retvik since the 4th…” Arkay sighed, falling silent and finishing off his sandwich.
The four mortals glanced at each other, not really sure what to say.
“I did not know that you knew another Retvik…” Retvik eventually muttered. “It is… on the list of reserved names for Rethans, so I find it odd that you know another one.”
“Yeah… To put it in… simple terms, before I ended up here as this universe’s death god, I was the death god in the universe before it. But there was a brief period of time where I wasn’t a god of anything. The same way that you four are blood-bound, I ended up blood-bound with Retvik and Litvir, but we got separated and then I ended up being bound to this universe, which they can’t enter… We did manage to get back in touch, but they’ve not been answering and I’m worried about them and I haven’t been able to tell anyone…” Arkay frowned, then got up. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be burdening you with this stuff…”
However, to Arkay’s surprise, Kayel pulled him back onto the sofa and held him tightly. Tenuk also reached over and hugged him.
“You’re not burdening us. Sure, we can’t really do much, but we can sit here and listen and make you feel better. Because you’re our friend, Arkay, no matter what.”
“And feel free to come by whenever you need to, Kyr Arkay!” Retvik smiled. “Our home is your home. We are always happy to see you.”
“Yeah! Best friends forever!” Nyssi beamed, getting up and throwing her arms around Arkay, Kayel and Tenuk. After a bit of hesitation, Retvik did the same. After an awkwardly long hug, everyone let go, giving the Thantophor some space.
Arkay hesitated, then rubbed his eyes, hiding a handful of tears. “Thank you. I… I appreciate this, way more than you think.”