Arkay expected to wake up in a cage, but, for some reason, he was in a comfy bed. He wasn’t even chained to it or anything. He was just lying there. And sitting by his side was Sini, not doing anything in particular.
“Hello, brother. How did you sleep?”
“Uh… angrily…” Arkay hissed, wondering what the catch was. He’d attacked Epani. Kairos had stopped him from seriously harming the elder Life Goddess. The fact that he hadn’t been sealed away was troubling him. “What is going on?”
“I brought you back to one of my nicer labs so you could recover and cool off.”
“Why?”
Sini finally turned to look at Arkay. Normally, she took the appearance of a large, slimy, big-busted pink Temthan with emerald scales, or a huge, purple serpent. Today, she was a seemingly normal Temthan with black skin and purple scale, but lacking the tendrils most female Temthans had, and she was the same size Arkay was.
“Are Litvir and Retvik alright?” Sini asked.
“Why are you asking?”
“I know Epani sent something horrible to them via your weird Decay Lord app, before she annihilated your communicator. Something intended to hurt and break them. I don’t know what she said, but I’m almost certain Epani told Retvik that Litvir, like a lot of Rethans at the time, bowed to Kenon’s manipulations, suggesting that Litvir was not as… redeemed as he said he was. Probably caused Litvir to fear retaliations and run.”
Arkay eyed Sini some more. “Why do you suddenly care?”
“They’re your, uh, partners, or whatever. Your blood-bound. I’ll be blunt, I didn’t think, out of all the beings in the multiverse, that you of all people would be in a thouple with the best old-universe Rethan and the worst old-universe Rethan, who seem to, somehow, be a really cute couple. But Epani doesn’t like you being happy so she tries to hurt everyone you care about.”
“Yeah but… you didn’t answer my question. Why do you care about Retvik and Litvir?”
“Because… I feel bad. You love them. Really, I should love them too, even if they’re old creations of mine. But Epani acted like a massive cunt and they didn’t deserve it and you don’t deserve it. I’m genuinely sorry for what she did, I just… I just wanted to know who you fell in love with, and Epani wanted to hurt them just because she could. And I am fucking sick and tired of Epani acting like Kinisis.”
Arkay opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t say anything at first. He sat up straight, feeling a lot of conflicting emotions. “Did you… just apologise to me?”
“Yeah. Epani treats you like shit. Everything you said the other day-”
“How long have I been out cold for?”
“Long enough. Are Retvik and Litvir alright?”
“I… I don’t really know. I got an email from Kuta saying that Litvir ran away but he was reunited with Retvik, but apart from that, I don’t know, I have no way of communicating with them.”
“Oh…” Sini frowned. “Either way, I’m still sorry. But going back to what I was saying, everything you said was completely right, and everything Epani has been doing lately has been completely wrong. At the same time though, I know you desperately want to hurt or kill Epani, but…” Sini trailed off. She sighed, loudly. “You killed Kinisis. She learned nothing from her death. Now she’s an angry, hungry corruption that continues to make us miserable, even if she’s half dead and not really conscious. Epani isn’t much different. She feels pain, sure, but she’ll just shrug it off, and you hurting her or killing her just proves her point in her mind. Not to mention that killing Epani would kinda fuck up the universe…”
Arkay growled. He tried to climb out of bed, but the look on Sini’s face suggested that he remain where he was.
“Is Epani going to kill me or something? Try and replace me? What?”
“Probably. I won’t let her though. She has Kairos protecting her. You have me protecting you. I honestly wonder why Kairos attacked you, I think Kinisis did something to him to make him blindly protect Life Goddesses. I don’t give a shit. We have a universe to run, and we can’t run our universe if you’re depressed and unwilling to protect it, and we DEFINITELY can’t run the universe properly if Epani continues to act as carelessly and Kinisis-y as she currently is. Things were going well before Epani made you go cold.”
Sini glanced at Arkay. Arkay decided to take a deep breath and calm down somewhat.
“It’s… weird, that you suddenly seem to care about me. You were mostly indifferent until that Kinisis-Corruption first attacked and I picked up some friends.”
“Yet again, you’re right. I was indifferent. But even my indifference was better than whatever Epani is doing now.”
“So… what do we do?” Arkay asked. “You just said I can’t hurt her or kill her, so how the fuck do we, well, fuck her up? Because, right now, I do genuinely want to kill Epani. She’s done nothing but hurt me over and over and fucking over and, like the fucking moron I am, I’ve just continued bending over backwards for you lot.”
“I know, I know. Admittedly, I’ve kinda been… holding onto your chains a little. Tighter than I have been anyway. I was somewhat scared you would actually just wake up, instantly teleport to wherever Epani is hiding and just slit her throat. While that is out of character for you, I didn’t know if you’d snap or not.”
“Reasonable, I guess. Still, I want to know what to do. Because, frankly, I NEED to hurt Epani.”
“Fair, fair…” Sini sighed some more. “I do have some sort of plan though, it… just needs, something? Information and details, mostly. We need to hurt Epani the way she’s hurt you, via the things that she loves. But Epani doesn’t really love mortals the way you do. She never was truly mortal, she as no idea what it’s like. So we need to target something else.”
“Hmph…” Arkay grunted. “I’d go after some of her favourite stars and planets, but I know her favourite star is surrounded by habited worlds, and her favourite planets are covered in mortals. I’m not willing to sacrifice any mortals to hurt Epani.”
“Not even Torr?”
Arkay glanced at Sini.
“What? Don’t look at me like that! Epani made them in her image. They are just as cruel and power-hungry as she is, that’s why she loves them so much, and I’ve made basically no progress in reshaping them to be better. Meanwhile, you finally convinced the Rethans to spread out their fancy genetics and made them more open to other races outside of just being guardians, and Kairos gave the Lanex some shiny things and they’re happier than ever! And you could have done more if Epani didn’t force you to go cold.”
Arkay’s glances turned into a glare.
“Alright, fine, we’re not hurting mortals… I’ll just have to make this plague I’ve designed to make the Torr less cuntish non-lethal or something…” Sini tutted. “Hm… I think I need to do some sleuthing around or something, work out what Epani actually loves and would genuinely be hurt from losing. But in the mean time, Arkay, I need a few things from you.”
“Of course you do. I can’t do anything without owing someone a favour.”
“It’s not a favour. It’s a word of advice. Epani was willing to openly attack you because you interfered with that cute little Vohra, and then you attacked her, which, in her eyes, is an excuse to continue hurting you. So I kinda think you should stay cold for a bit longer. Just, like, a week or so, until we can put a real plan together. The other thing I need you to do is to find a way to contact your Decay Lord partners again. Because, outside of us deities, that Vohra and some Lanex, you’ve had one single proper conversation in the last two weeks, and that was with that weird pure silver Voidborn who seems to pop by occasionally and Epani keeps on screaming at you to kill even though they’ve never entered our universe.”
“Theocydes is moving to a new sector anyway so we won’t be seeing him around any time soon.”
This time, Sini glanced at Arkay. “You know that Voidborn’s name?”
“Yeah. Back when I was a Decay Lord, I teleported him into a sun, he respawned and tried to kill me and Litvir convinced him to stop being a massive cunt, which somehow worked.”
“Huh…” Sini trailed off, not really knowing what to do with that new information. “Anyway, can you do those things for me? In the mean time, you can hang around this lab, use it as a temporary resting place or whatever. Epani won’t risk attacking my labs just to get to you.”
Arkay sighed, then nodded. “Fine. I can do those things. But I’m still going to find a way to make Epani suffer.”
“And I’ll help you do that. An eye for an eye, or as close as we can get, as Kenon used to say…”