“Why are you here?”
Arkay stared blankly at the Skyan standing in front of him. It must have been late because all the lights were dimmed and there were only seven guards stationed around his cell rather than the normal twenty. They all knew that the guards were only there for show, yet there the guards remained, constantly on duty.
Apart from the one standing in front of Arkay.
“Why are you here?”
“You’re talking to me, right?” Arkay asked.
“Don’t play stupid. I’m asking you questions. I want you to answer. You have refused to answer everyone else.”
Arkay yawned and stretched, pulling at his arms. “To be fair no one else has really asked questions. They’ve all just been vaguely annoyed that I’m here… Why are you here, Teekay?”
Teekay hissed, then tutted. “I am asking the questions, Arkadin.”
“Please call me Arkay. I don’t ask for much, but I’d really like it if you called me Arkay. I mean, we’re both Skyans, right?”
“You are not a Skyan. You are a death god pretending to be a mortal.”
“Am I not allowed to pretend? I don’t-”
“Why will you not tell me, or anyone for that matter, why you are here?” Teekay interrupted. “You are the damn Thantophor. The Lord of Decay. You have your own realm. Yet you are here, disguised as one of us. Why? You will not say!”
Arkay sighed a little, then yawned some more. “You want to know?”
“We all do, Arkad… Arkay. We all want to know why you decided to come here. Out of all the places in the universe…”
After a brief moment of thought, Arkay shrugged. “I thought the whole thing of me coming here was pretty obvious. I mean, I have always taken the form of a Threanic Panvok being. Sometimes it’s Rethan, sometimes it’s Skyan, sometimes it’s Athren… you get the idea.”
Teekay tutted. “You are playing games.”
“Not at all!” Arkay protested, raising his hands in a non-menacing manner. “I am not playing games! It’s just… the reasons why I’m here are awkward. Firstly because I kinda didn’t expect to wake up here. Turns out that this was just the last place I left a body, so I reconstructed here…”
“But you stuck around.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Arkay closed his eyes, sighing some more. “You have no damn idea how… exhausted I am. I go from place to place, having my realms, properties, homes, everything firebombed by my pissed off siblings. Every time I try and settle down in some stupid little corner, someone else comes along to destroy it. The reason why I came here is because none of my siblings would dare try to harm the Voidborn’s little favourites. I came here to sleep peacefully.”
Teekay blinked. “You came here… just to sleep?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
Arkay nodded.
“You don’t want to hurt anyone? You don’t want to do anything? You just want to sleep?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s no… ulterior motive?”
“Nope.”
“Why…” Teekay hesitated. “Why did you not tell anyone?”
“Because it sounds dumb.”
“It… it’s not dumb…”
Arkay shrugged. “I feel like it is.”
“It isn’t. I understand the feeling.”
“Now you know the truth…”
Teekay took a deep breath. “I can make… arrangements if you want.”
Arkay smiled, just a little. “That would be… nice…”