“Hey, Tahvra, how are you doing?”
Tahvra blinked. He had been staring out of the observatory window. How long had he been sitting there? Tahvra wasn’t sure. In his hands was one of his new favourite possessions, a buildable action figure in the shape of his best friend. Tahvra continued to blink, not really sure where he was.
“Is he normally like this?” a somewhat husky but female voice asked behind him.
“No, not really…”
Metallic footsteps clomped behind Tahvra. He continued to stare blankly outside, until a gentle hand on his shoulder snapped him back to reality.
“Oh, hi Akah! Hi Phovos! You guys okay?” Tahvra blinked some more as he turned around to face his friends.
“Uh, yes, we’re both fine. And sober, now…” Akah hesitated. . “Phovos said you were acting a bit out of sorts, that you suddenly got very tired while you were both playing and she was worried about you.”
“And you’ve been sitting in here, staring out of the window for ages!” Phovos added. “I haven’t been able to move you!”
Yet again, Tahvra blinked. He glanced down at a nearby small, foldable tablet, his personal communicator and computer, to see what time it was.
“Where did you go?” Tahvra asked after an oddly long delay. “We were playing.”
Phovos sighed, then sat down next to Tahvra. “I told you, I was hungry and went to get something to eat. Kinda got distracted because I had a chat with Eksi, who was hiding from Loopblade again, but I said I would be gone for an hour and I came back ten minutes ago and you were just sitting here, staring outside. I tried talking to you and you didn’t answer, so I went to get Akah, because you and Akah are friends and he knows you best.”
“Oh… I’m kinda hungry… Actually, I should get something to eat. Do you think they’ll give me a big bowl of honey?”
Akah also sat down next to Tahvra, putting an arm around the little Vohra and handing him a bottle of water. “They seem to have pretty much everything, so I’m sure we can get you some honey. You normally want something mushroom-y though. Assuming you eat anything.”
Even more blinks. Tahvra found he could barely focus. He shook his head, then looked at Phovos. She’d been very kind to him. Very understanding. Despite the fact she was a Ksithan. A female Ksithan. Tahvra thought to himself, wondering why he suddenly cared about Phovos’s gender.
“Tahvra, you’re not here…”
Akah was tapping Tahvra on the shoulder. Tahvra stopped staring at Phovos then rubbed his eyes and turned to his best friend. “No, I… I can’t concentrate. Akah, do you have Vahgra-feelings for Phovos?”
“What are Vahgra-feelings?” Phovos whispered.
“I’m not romantically interested in Phovos, no. She’s a Ksithan, I’m a Lanex, neither of us are interested in relationships,” Akah replied calmly. “Is something bothering you, Tahvra? You are very out of sorts right now. Did you drink too much?”
“I haven’t had anything to drink since I had that really long nap!” Tahvra exclaimed. “But… you’re right, I feel weird right now.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Tahvra hesitated, then looked at Phovos again. “You’re pretty.”
It was Phovos’s turn to blink in confusion. She glanced down at herself, at the new plain blue vest top and jeans she was wearing. Sure, Phovos got comments about her looks on the regular, she was a Life Goddess and one of the very few beings with a vagina on the Shimmering Blade, but Tahvra’s comment caught her by surprise.
“Uh, thank you. I appreciate the comment but that’s not something you normally say.”
Tahvra glanced at Phovos again, then stared outside. “No, it’s not.”
“Tahvra, you can talk to us, you know!” Akah smiled as he pulled Tahvra close, giving him a little hug.
Neither Lanex nor Vohra were really beings known to do hugs, but Akah was concerned and he needed a way to show it in a way that Tahvra would understand. After all, being a Vohra, Tahvra processed emotions in an odd way. In some cases, Tahvra didn’t process emotions at all. The reason why was simple, Vohra were an ancient species that had remained unchanged for a very long time, and, being somewhat hivemind-y, the majority of Vohra didn’t even need emotions.
Really, the only reason Tahvra had emotions was because he was a Vahla, a more intelligent sub-breed of Vohra, designed to do tasks that were far beyond the intelligence of normal Vohra, as well as defending their nests and doing jobs that the massive, bloated Vahyra Queens of a nest were incapable of doing.
“Why are you being nice to me?” Tahvra randomly asked.
“You know why. We’re friends!” Akah patted Tahvra on the shoulder, then let him go. There was nearly a metre in height difference between the Lanex and the Vohra.
“Yeah but I’m just a Vohra.”
“You’re not just a Vohra. You’re literally the best Vohra ever, because Kinisis chose you to be one of her Divine Guardians!” Phovos butted in. “Like, you’re genetically the best, the same way all the other Guardians are! Not that there are technically any Vohra left, same way the rest of us are all essentially extinct, but…” Phovos trailed off, having bothered herself greatly with that line of thought. Akah also seemed to struggle with the idea, but he shrugged and went back to talking about Tahvra.
“Doesn’t matter what you are, we’re still your friends. I mean, Tenuk’s a Kronospast bastard, and we’re still friends with him.”
“You’re kinda racist against Kronospasts…” Phovos muttered.
“Can you blame me? They enslaved my kind and nearly drove us to extinction on multiple occasions. Sure, Tenuk changed his mind and betrayed his kind, but he did so at the age of, like 900, and it took a deity disguised as a Skyavok to push him to take that final step.”
“Eh… still…”
“I don’t have a problem with Tenuk, most of the time. Just his father…” Akah tutted, then turned back to Tahvra. “My friend, you’re not well. We want to help you. What’s wrong?”
Tahvra found himself staring at Phovos again, before rubbing his eyes and wiping his mouth. He was drooling, and… Tahvra suddenly realized why. He hadn’t felt like this in a long time, not since his last rebirth. Like Akah and Phovos, Tahvra had always been semi-immortal. But rather than rising from icy ashes or forming a healing cocoon the way his fellow Guardians did whenever they reached the end of their lives, Tahvra would reach a specific age and just instantly turn back into an unhatched egg again. That age would have been the day he was due to become a Vahrga, an adult male Vohra, but because he was a Vahla, he’d been neutered not long after being born, so he’d never reach adulthood.
However, when he had been turned into a Divine Guardian, Tahvra’s body had been completely healed of any and all injuries and illnesses. And that potentially meant that Tahvra’s male parts had grown back.
“I’m… turning into a Vahgra…” Tahvra stuttered.
Akah and Phovos glanced at each other.
“You said you were neutered though?” Akah blinked. “You’re a Vahla, a Kalsa Guardian at that, you were neutered so you’d never turn into a Vahrga!”
“Yeah but Kinisis… she fixed us all up. Like, she fixed your broken eye, Akah, and Phovos’s broken horn. Maybe she fixed my… maybe my testicles grew back…” Tahvra suddenly leaped to his feet, panicking. “I can’t become a Vahrga! I don’t want to! I’ll go mad! I’ll turn into an uncontrollable monster!”
Akah frowned, then scooped Tahvra up, carrying him in his arms. “It’s okay, Tahvra, we’ll fix this. We know what the problem is now, we can work towards solving it.”
“So we just have to cut Tahvra’s balls off and he’ll be fine?” Phovos looked Tahvra up and down. She didn’t really know much about Vohra biology, so she felt confused.
Tahvra sighed. “Yeah. Just… gotta get someone to reach into my mouth and cut them out. But I’ll need to be anaesthetized and have surgery though and I don’t know if I can trust the Phantai doctors to do that!”
“I’m pretty sure we can ask Leh to help us out. He seems to be Kal’s resident medical expert, we should be fine!” Akah tried to be optimistic. “We’ll go and find him right now, he’s probably not busy. Kal don’t have much to do since we blew up the Diamond.”
Before anyone could move though, the door to the observatory burst open. Standing in it was Vikalos, who looked incredibly stressed and panicked.
“Have any of you seen my partners?” Vikalos’s voice was incredibly strained. “I have scoured this ship from top to bottom and I can’t find Itaviir or Galyn anywhere.”
The Decaylings all shook their heads.
“We haven’t…” Phovos sighed. “Have you spoken to any of our resident telepaths?”
Vikalos growled. “Litvir is busy and I cannot find Eksi.”
“Ah. I know where Eksi’s currently hiding. Akah, Tahvra, do you two mind if I go and help Vikalos?”
“It’s fine!” Tahvra chirped, feeling better now that he had worked out what was going on, He waved at Phovos and Vikalos as they left the room. “Bye! Hope you can find your friends, mister Vikalos!”