Being a small, mechanical being that also somehow had emotions, Nuh regularly wished that he had a way of expressing them outside of the tone of his flat, mechanical voice, and the brightness of his large, lime green crystal eyes. Sure, Nuh would occasionally use his telepathy to express particularly strong emotions to his siblings, but he didn’t like doing that with others, it was unprofessional. Right now though, as Decayling Tenuk, Time Drake Elksia and fellow Decay Lords Retvik and Litvir explained their weird problem to him, Nuh really, really wished he could at the very least visibly display confusion and annoyance.
“Okay, so, let me get this straight. Tenuk has some sort of relic that lets him open a door to Arkay’s actual home, and you want ME to go through and see if Arkay’s alright, because you’re all concerned that the two Life Goddesses holding Arkay prisoner inside his universe might detect you and instantly kill you should you step inside, but you think I’ll be fine?”
Tenuk shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much.”
Nuh clicked several times. “These are the same Life Goddesses that own that Kairos guy, right? Because he was a right grumpy butt, but they were weakening him as well.”
“Yeah… wait…” Tenuk glanced at Retvik. “What does he mean by that?”
Nuh glanced at Litvir, who telepathically told him not to say too much. “Uh, Kairos, Arkay’s fellow deity, requested that we help him and Arkay with a… small Corruption issue somewhat recently. We did our jobs as purifiers, and as we did our normal scans, we, uh, realized that the two of them were so riddled with Life Goddess manipulation that what should have been a minor thing was now a problem…” Nuh paused, then thought to himself. “That reminds me, we ought to get Elkay checked out. If he is a hybrid mimic, then his blood should have anti-Corruption effects as well… Either way, we, uh, did kinda… see Arkay recently. Before we joined you Thantir properly though.”
Tenuk blinked, then shrugged some more. “Another good reason as to why you should go through and not one of us. If Epani or Yisini discover you, you can just claim you are doing a check-up or something!”
“Alright, fine, I’ll go…” Nuh relented as Tenuk handed him a tea strainer. It would have been somewhat small for Tenuk, even in his current shapeshifted Vrekan form, but it was a bit large for Nuh. Nuh didn’t even really know what a tea strainer was until about five minutes ago. “So how does this work?”
“You tap it on the handle of a door, which unlocks it, then tap it again, then open the door. Then when you’re done, close the door, tap it yet again then tug on the handle and all done! Arkay’s home should be on the other side!” Elksia beamed. “Simples!”
“Yeah, but why are we doing this in Retvik’s room?” Nuh asked.
“Because it is quiet in here, and we have two doors close to each other…” Retvik grunted. “We cannot risk anything coming through either way, and if you stumble across something unfriendly or, well, mortal, we do not want them looking in here.”
Nuh gestured at himself. “I’m a 1m tall round black and silver robot with glowing lime green eyes and massive, utterly pointless metal teeth that are glued to a mouth that can’t move.”
Retvik glanced at Tenuk and Elksia. “He has a point.”
“We’re doing this shit for you, Retvik, shut up!” Tenuk tutted. “Nuh has been to this new universe before. And sure, Litvir’s weird twin brother is trapped inside this universe, Litvir himself can’t go in, none of us can, because we’d just turn back into mortals! Nuh is… uh… already immortal because he’s a robot.”
“Fine. Just…” Retvik seemed exasperated. “Just… I do not know. Get on with it, I guess.”
With an annoyed click, Nuh closed himself in between the two doors, then took the tea strainer and did as Elksia had explained. He opened the door in front of him, not sure what to expect.
Instead of a bathroom, Nuh found himself staring into a dark, empty apartment. An apartment with someone in it. Someone yellow. But not the someone Nuh was looking for.
“AH FUCK A ROBOT VOHRA!”
The creature fell backwards, then crawled backwards, before drawing a weapon, some sort of rifle, which it pointed at Nuh.
“I’m definitely in the right place…” Nuh muttered as he scanned the creature. It looked like it was the same species as Teekay and Eksi, the two Skyavok members of the Thantir, but its skin was pitch black and its plating was yellow. However, it didn’t seem to have the familiar telepathic and telekinetic notes that the Skyavok Decaylings had, and instead had a shadowy aura. It was also wearing a heavy fabric hoodie, similar to what Phovos, the Thantir’s resident Life Goddess, wore whenever she was cold or depressed. “Hello, I’m Cleanser Kal Wehl-Nuh, codename Gravitybash, Nuh for short, I’m looking for Arkay, also known as Arkadin, Arkidetelos or Deathbringer. Have you heard or do you know of him?”
The creature stuttered as it tried to pick itself up. “You… you know Arkay?”
“Yeah. My siblings and I work as purifiers, we remove Corruption from deities. We did so for Arkay, at the behest of his fellow deities, and I am here to do a check-up.”
“Uh… Are you one of the strange robot Vohra beings that Retvik saw when he went outside the universe with Arkay and the Whenvern?”
Nuh nodded. “I am! What’s your name?”
“I… I’m Kayel. Kayel Theanon. One of Arkay’s mortal friends. Uh, someone he accidentally made immortal. But he kinda… disappeared. Said something about going cold.”
Kayel stood up and holstered his weapon, then slowly approached Nuh, but kept his distance. “Are you a Decay Lord or a Decayling like Kuta is?”
“Yes, I’ve been a Decay Lord for a long time.”
“You… look like a Vohra, but completely mechanical.”
“I suppose so, I’ve only ever met one Vohra but I’ve had multiple people say that…” Nuh decided to cut to the chase. He didn’t know how much time he had, but he didn’t want to attract any unwanted attention. “I’m kinda just here to check and see that Arkay is doing well. But you said he disappeared?”
Kayel hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah… I… I don’t get it myself. Like, Arkay sent me and the guys a message with an explanation, but I don’t get it.”
“May I read this message?”
“Uh, sure…” Kayel fiddled with his wristband, then pulled a thin device from a pocket in his hoodie and tapped a few buttons on it. He handed this device to Nuh, where Arkay’s message was displayed.
Nuh inspected the message, silently thankful that he could automatically translate most languages. After reading it a few times, Nuh waved his claw over the device, downloading a copy of it into his storage drive, then turned back to Kayel.
“So Arkay hasn’t turned into a monster or hurt anyone, nor has he shown any signs of doing so, but it was hinted that he might turn into a monster at the sight of his friend being hurt and that caused him to disappear?”
“Something like that…” Kayel frowned.
“And this place is… where Arkay used to live? Because he clearly doesn’t live here now.”
Another frown. “Yeah. I came here because I hoped to speak to him, but he’s long gone. Like, he was my friend and my matron deity and I liked him and… well… he actually cares about mortals and wanted to protect us. Which is… why he went back to not… being with us…”
“Is he still doing his duties?”
“I think so, yeah. It’s basically no physical contact. Which sucks because Arkay liked having friends for once. Things were pretty fucking great with Arkay being among mortals again. Weird but good.”
“And the universe is fine?”
“Yeah, universe is fine. But the races Arkay looks after, we’re all kinda upset.”
“That’s understandable…” Nuh hesitated, then quickly rescanned the copy of that message he’d made. “Can I ask some questions? Since you seem to know Arkay personally?”
“Only if I can ask you some questions too!” Kayel exclaimed. “Like, do you know Arkay, in person, or something? What do you do? Are you, like, gods or something?”
Nuh dimmed his eyes briefly. “I… kinda… owe Arkay, if I’m honest. Me and my team, we work as purifiers, we remove corruption and other nasty stuff from unlucky folks, been doing so for a long time. When we first met Arkay, we fixed him up, routine job. He came back a while later and solved a massive problem for us. If you don’t mind me asking though, when did all this start happening?”
Kayel blinked in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, the whole Arkay realizing he needed to cut off all contact situation.”
“Oh. Like… over the space of a couple of days, I guess. It was really sudden…” Kayel paused. “I got another question. How did you get here? Because Retvik said you had a space ship.”
Nuh shrugged, then showed Kayel the tea strainer. “This weird thing.”
“That’s a tea strainer.”
“Yes, but it’s magical.”
“Can you even drink tea?”
“No.”
“Huh.”
Nuh had more he wanted to both say and ask, but as he dimmed his eyes again, he could feel a change in the local gravity. The presence of a large being. Probably a deity. “I’m sorry, I have to go now. Do me a favour and don’t tell the other gods I was here, alright?”
“Yeah, I’ll keep quiet. Pretty fucking hard for me to do since us Skyavok are all archivists but… can I tell Arkay? If I see him?”
“You know what? Yeah, sure. Let him know that his friends outside the universe care for him and miss him…” That gravitational presence was getting closer. Nuh knew he really needed to leave. “Nice meeting you, Kayel.”
“Nice meeting you too, weird mechanical Vohra guy!”
Nuh stepped backwards, and closed the door behind him. He then tapped on the door with the tea strainer and tugged on it, before opening the door again. This time, all he saw was a small bathroom. With a sigh, Nuh turned around and opened the door behind him, where Retvik, Litvir, Elksia and Tenuk were all waiting.
“So?” Tenuk immediately asked.
“I saw a yellow-armoured Skyavok but it wasn’t Arkay, it was one of his mortal friends, who was also looking for Arkay. Said their name was Kayel Theanon. We had a quick chat, but I sensed a deity was coming along and had to cut things short.”
“Which deity?” Retvik asked.
“Probably Epani?” Nuh shrugged. “I didn’t see them, but they were quite big and had a nonsensical gravitational pull. The whole universe seemed fine though, no angry death and destruction. From what Kayel said and how suddenly this all happened, I think Arkay may have been tricked into cutting all contact.”
“Why?”
“You don’t just turn into an apocalypse in an instant.”
Retvik and Litvir glanced at each other, then both sighed.
“Yes you do…” Litvir muttered as he walked off. “Tricked or not, Arkidetelos is potentially still a threat. And to think we were making such good progress…”