“Vikalos?”
Vikalos glanced up to see Elkay standing in front of him, looking rather upset.
“Is something wrong, deary?”
Elkay sighed, then nodded. “I want to speak to my fellow Decaylings in private, without anyone overhearing. I need to get some things off my chest and I… I do not want you elders to hear. At least, not yet.”
Vikalos quickly surveyed the observatory. The other Decaylings had all noticed Elkay get up and approach him. He then looked down at his watch, which had a timer on it, matching the timer on the bands around Elkay’s neck and wrists. A countdown timer, with just over 23 hours left on it.
“Very well. I will give you an hour. I will be outside if you need me.”
Elkay bowed as Vikalos stepped outside the observatory, closing the door behind him. Once the coast was clear, Elkay made his way to the centre of the room and got down on his knees. Realizing something was up, Teekay sat down next to him, and the other Decaylings gathered around as well.
“What’s wrong, mate?” Eksi immediately asked. “You’re a fucking whirlpool of emotions right now. Considering you’re a Rethan, that’s clearly not good.”
“I have had concerns for a while now, since we put these trial bands on. I am scared that you will all suffer, just because I happen to not be a standard Decayling.”
“You think that what happened to Retvik and Litvir when they did their Decay Lord Trial will happen to us?” Akah blinked. “That was… a couple of, well, years ago, yes? Things are completely different now.”
“Yeah, we don’t have trackers in our necks or anything like they did!” Eksi chirped. “There’s eight of us, we can protect each other better! Elksia is a Time Drake, Phovos is a Life Goddess, you’re unkillable, we’ll be fine. And that’s ignoring the fact that us boring normal Decayons are all pretty damn strong as well! Even Tahvra.”
Tenuk nodded in agreement. “Like, I was a bit worried about Tahvra, but, mate, you’re fucking fast on your feet, you have telepathy and telekinesis, you’re way smarter than you make yourself out to be and you throw those little toxic darts with some damn good accuracy.”
Tahvra smiled, feeling quite happy. Out of all of them, Tahvra was in fact the least nervous by far. “And I’m just the small, weak one! Eksi’s right, we’ll be fine! What’s the worst that can happen? We do the same trial mister Retvik and mister Litvir did? We know how they beat their trial, we can do the same but better!”
Teekay patted Elkay on the shoulder, in a bid to settle his nerves. “Babe, they’re right, you know. We’ll be fine. And if things are tough, we’ll fight our way through it, like we always do.”
“Like, what do they expect from us anyway?” Phovos queried. “We’ll fight Voidborns? We’ve done that before. We’ll fight corrupted stuff? We’ve done that before too. We fought Ahkron and survived. Akah fucking went 1v1 versus the cunt and didn’t instantly get liquefied.”
“To be fair, apart from freezing off one of his limbs, I didn’t do that much, I just distracted him briefly…” Akah muttered.
“Yeah, so? Retvik ended up having his head smashed against a wall!” Phovos retorted. “And he had backup from the rest of us. Seriously, Elkay, you’re worrying for no reason. We’ll be fine. We’ve done nothing but train for this. I repeat, we’ll be fine.”
Eksi inspected Elkay, who was clearly not convinced, and was shifting awkwardly, his eyes awkwardly darting around but mostly focused on the floor, unable to look at his fellow Decaylings.
“Elkay, be honest, what’s wrong? You’re… You’re genuinely scared.”
“I am. I am terrified that you will all be hurt because of me. Yes, I get it, we have been through a lot. But the same monsters that put my brother through hell are still in charge. They know what I am, and the past has shown that they do not care, they will happily hurt you to get to me. Which is why… I want to make a promise.”
Tenuk glanced over at Elksia and Phovos, then tutted. “What are you on about, Elkay?”
Elkay took a long, drawn out breath. “Arkay made a promise to Retvik and Litvir, that he would protect them until they were reunited. And that he would protect them, potentially breaking reality to do so. That is how Retvik survived the destruction of the Diamond, and how we found Litvir when he ran. I am certain I am not as powerful as Arkay is, but I want to make a similar promise. A promise to protect you seven from unwarrant-”
Much to Elkay’s surprise, Tahvra immediately got up, rushed over and covered Elkay’s mouth.
“Stop.”
“What?” Elkay hissed. “I am trying to-”
“Stop. Take a deep breath. Think. Mister Elkay, you are panicking. And you will make a promise you can’t keep.”
“I need to protect you all! I need to protect you all from myself!”
“And you are! You’re a big, strong Rethan! Not as big as mister Retvik but you’re still strong!” Tahvra smiled, baring his tusks. “You can make your little promise! But you need to think about it first. Put the words in the right order. Make it so you just protect us from the trial. Because otherwise you break yourself. You make a promise you can’t keep.”
“I will keep my promises.”
Tahvra shrugged. “Probably, yeah. But I don’t know missy Arkay very well, but I heard what you all said about him. That he broke a promise and it hurt him and now he’s stuck. He’s sad and trapped and stuff. You want to protect us, yes? Well, we wanna protect you too. By making sure you don’t break yourself while trying to protect us.”
“I think what Tahvra is trying to say is that you need to word your promise carefully, Elkay!” Akah explained a bit more clearly. “We are thankful for your desire to protect us, but we don’t want to hurt you in the process.”
“What they said!” Tenuk added. He too got up and made his way over to Elkay’s side. Eksi sat down next to him as well. “Put a time limit on your promise, don’t swear on your life, give yourself an escape clause or something. Trust me, I’m a Kronospast, we were basically trickster deities to a lot of low-level planet-bound races, a lot of older folks would twist promises and wishes for the sake of it. We can’t let you do that to yourself, mate.”
Elkay relented somewhat. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, losing himself in thought. Eventually, Elkay opened his eyes again.
“My beloved, Teekay, who I am honour-bound to, my fellow Decaylings, Akah, Eksi, Elksia, Phovos, Tahvra and Tenuk, I make the following promise to you all. I, Elkay Theanon-Rethianos, promise that, until we become Decay Lords, I will not allow others to unlawfully harm you because of my status as a non-standard Decayon. I promise that you will all survive our Decay Lord Trial in one piece and that I will do everything within my power to protect you all for the duration of our Trial.”
Tahvra patted Elkay on the arm. “That is a nice promise!”
“It is…” Elksia murmured. She’d been quiet the entire time. “And you’ll keep it. I can see that. But I wanna make a promise too. One for all eight of us.”
“One where we stick together, angel?” Tenuk suggested.
“Yeah. We’re the new Thantir. We owe it to ourselves. To remain as a team.” Elksia’s words had an odd tune, a whistle to them. It was an old Vrekan trait, after all, the Vrekans were bird-like in nature, and they were one of the few races of the old universe capable of properly singing. “We all promise. Through the cold void, until we’re lifeless, together.”
“We all stay together!” Tahvra chirped.
“We all fight together!” Teekay proclaimed.
“We all care for each other!” Eksi smiled.
“We all protect each other!” Phovos snarled.
“We all save together…” Elkay sighed.
“We all thrive together.” Tenuk cheerfully demanded.
“We all lift together. Through the cold void, until we’re lifeless, forever…” Akah almost sang, reiterating Elksia’s words. “We all promise.”
The Decaylings all fell silent, not really sure what to say.
“Hey Akah?” Elksia finally spoke, her voice returning to her normal pitch.
“Yes?”
“You’ve got a pretty nice voice.”
“Huh. Thank you.”
“Alright, enough serious stuff!” Tenuk suddenly exclaimed. “We need to think of a cool name for ourselves or something. Because we aren’t gonna be the Thantir Decaylings any more, and I don’t trust these Deathven folks to give us a decent name, considering what they called Retvik, Litvir and Arkay.”
“I will be blunt, I cannot think of anything right now…” Elkay frowned, getting off his knees and sitting down properly on his butt. To his surprise, Tahvra just sat in his lap, while both Teekay and Eksi snuggled up next to him.
“Eh, we got time to think about it…” Teekay shrugged as he gave Elkay a quick kiss. “But we’ve not got long left. We should be using this time to have a nice, good nap.”
The other Decaylings all nodded. Elkay laid back, with Tahvra still remaining on his lap and Eksi and Teekay still snuggling up beside him. Tenuk and Elksia decided to join in on the snuggle pile, awkwardly lying on Elkay’s wings, while Phovos and Akah chose to just sit a bit closer together.
“Thank you, everyone…” Elkay muttered as everyone settled down.
“No worries, my angel!” Teekay smiled. “We’ll be fine. We all have faith in each other. Everything will turn out alright. We just promised that it would. And, around here, we tend to keep our promises…”