“GO AWAY!”
Arkadin shouted, but nothing replied, his voice echoing across the vally. He didn’t expect an answer anyway.
“Just fucking shut up already…”
Still no reply. But Arkadin didn’t want one. He just wanted the murmurs in his mind to leave him alone.
There had always been whispers in the back of Arkadin’s head. As long as Arkadin had been sentient, they were there, twittering and mumbling and murmuring. Saying all sorts of horrible things. Telling him to kill, slaughter and maim. But more importantly, telling him that he was hungry.
“Please, I’ve had enough of you!”
Every couple of hundred years, they’d get louder. To the point that Arkadin couldn’t hear himself think. When he was younger, he would hear them constantly, ceaselessly, screaming at him to cause mass extinctions and feed off the ashes. Sometimes he would. He’d travel along meteor-ridden paths, feasting on dead planets, the aftermaths of collisions in early solar systems. But the voices never got quieter. They’d get louder, egging him to kill more and more and more.
It wasn’t until Kenon set Arkadin up with a strict series of rules to keep Arkadin busy, keep him on track. This was only a partial solution. The voices remained quiet for a while, but they’d flare up again on occasion.
Then the Great Corruption attacked. The Great War. Arkadin fought not just for his own continued existence but for the entirety of the universe. They may have survived that horrific attack, but it had left Arkadin both scarred and scared.
Ever since, the voices had come back. And Kenon’s rules were no longer as efficient or as helpful as they used to be.
Normally Arkadin would be able to cope no problem. But today, the voices were particularly loud and aggravating.
“JUST GIVE ME FIVE FUCKING MINUTES OF PEACE AND QUIET!”
The murmuring ceased, if just for a moment, before slowly picking up again.
“Are they bothering you, son?”
Arkadin glanced over his shoulder. Kenon was standing there, sighing.
“Yes, they are.”
“And you have been following the rules?”
“To the letter. The only thing I am doing differently is talking to a couple of mortals, but I was doing that in the past anyway.”
Kenon sighed again. “We must make more rules. Stricter ones.”
“We can keep on making more and more rules until I’m nothing more than a mindless death cloud!” Arkadin snapped. “It won’t fix the damn voices! Clearly I’m destined to become a Corruption, sooner rather than later!”
The Thantophor grunted and stared off into the distance. The last thing he wanted was for Kenon to lecture him.
“It’s not working any more, Kenon.”
“I noticed.”
“I don’t want to turn into a Corruption.”
“I know.”
Arkadin took a deep breath. “The other three keep on saying that the rules you give me are to keep me down, to make me grow out of them and bend them and break them, so one day I’ll be like them. More free. That’s nonsense, right?”
“Mostly.”
Arkadin blinked. “Mostly?”
“They are to keep you from getting hungry. If you are not hungry, then you cannot be corrupted.”
“But what if I found a different way to make myself not hungry?” Arkadin asked. “A different way? Through friendship and companionship, or disappearing maybe, or perhaps a different routine or something?”
“Those are untested waters, son.”
“To be fair, so were all these rules.”
“These rules work.”
“So might some other ways. We don’t know if we don’t try!” Arkadin hissed.
Kenon sighed one last time. “Fine. You can try something else for a year.”
“That’s not even-”
“That is all the time I am willing to risk.”
Before Arkadin could argue further, Kenon disappeared.
Immediately, the murmurs and whispered started murmuring and whispering louder. Murmuring and whispering ideas on how to hurt his fellow gods.
“Maybe they were right…” Arkadin sighed. “Maybe I should just go away for a bit…”