“Epani, we need to talk.”
Kairos and Sini both glanced at each other, having said the same words at the same time. They had both been busy doing semi-related things. Kairos had been checking potential future snapshots in order to make sure that the universe was safe, and Sini had been keeping an eye on their younger sibling, hoping he didn’t do anything stupid.
Epani though, she was currently in her massive, space whale form, taking up the entirety of the main hall in the fortress at the centre of the universe. And she’d been there for a while, mostly unmoving.
“I know.”
Sini turned to Kairos and tutted. “You go first.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
Kairos shrugged, then bared his teeth ever so slightly as he approached Epani. “You do realize, you nearly doomed the universe the other day, yes?”
Epani didn’t answer. She closed her eyes and turned her head away.
“Epani, sister, you need to understand. Your actions nearly caused not one but two potential end-of-universe scenarios, both of which Sini and I managed to stop. We pulled a LOT of strings to make sure things turned out alright. Literal strings, in Sini’s case, since she sees and manipulates the Forward Flow differently to me. You faced extinction. We stopped it. We need to talk.”
Again, Epani didn’t respond, outside of a broken sigh.
“Epani, you do realize that you genuinely could have died, and Sini and I may not have been able to save you?”
“Maybe we should tell you the strings we pulled, then?” Sini snapped. “Because, right off the bat, the way you stabbed Arkay could have immediately turned him into Hungry, Mindless Arkidetelos, rather than Enraged, Manipulated Arkidetelos! We tweaked things so you’d miss. And that you’d continue to miss!”
“We then chose the path where you remained in that mortal Rethan’s home rather than bringing Arkay back here, because you trying to do a reset on your own had massive Arkidetelian risks tied to it, as well as the potential of flat out erasing Arkay completely…” Kairos added.
“Indeed! And that’s not to mention the huge number of potential paths we had to check to make sure only the right people were around to stop you!”
Kairos paused, then turned back to Sini. “What do you mean by that?”
Sini put her hands on her hips. “Epani’s teleportation effect should have knocked everyone out for a minimum of an hour. Because Kuta is a Decayling, the cute little fanged Rethan doesn’t sleep much at all, and I prodded them so they instantly woke up, and Kuta then went on to wake Retvik up. However, Skyavok are also light sleepers, and had I not made Kayel sleep a bit longer, he would have grabbed his corruption-killing blade, immediately shadowjumped back and stabbed Epani without hesitation! At the same time, being a former assassin who has gladly taken the lives of others before, Kayel would have gone for the neck or the heart, rather than the shoulder like Retvik did!”
“Ah, I see…” Kairos grunted. “I was wondering why the Phantasma Skyavok didn’t react as fast as I predicted. Either way, Epani, you HAVE to understand, we can’t keep on doing this. We can’t do our jobs, we can’t run this universe and I can’t keep you safe if you keep on pushing your desires on Arkay!”
“And we have to stop resetting him as well. Arkay did a new record speed run of rediscovering himself and how we enslaved him. We reset him, he’ll do it again, but more violently…” Sini tutted. “This whole mess is just… too much. You want a perfect universe but you keep on sabotaging it! At the rate we’re going, I’m thinking of pulling a you, getting Arkay to kill you and starting yet again! I… I don’t get it, Epani, why are you like this?”
Epani whimpered slightly, then rolled over so she could look at Sini and Kairos.
“I… I can’t help it… I… there… there is a hole inside me. One I cannot fill without causing pain to others. If I make others suffer, then I get some respite from the gnawing pain I feel. And since Arkay… tolerates what I do to him, the respite lasts longer. It is not the Perpetual Hunger though, it is something else.”
Kairos was blatantly confused, not at all sure what Epani was talking about. But Sini immediately knew what she meant.
“Oh. So you feel it too.”
“You enjoy suffering. It fulfils you.”
Sini frowned, then nodded. “Yeah. I always thought it was because Kinisis made me to be intentionally inferior to you. She gave me the Dispa, a permanent… thirst to inflict pain on others, to control and subjugate them. I think it was meant to distract me from my work or slow me down or… I don’t know. It’s why I had my old torture labs in the Before, and it’s why I sometimes have to… rebuild them now. I never realised you had the same thing. Always assumed it was just me, because the Life Goddesses that used to visit Kinisis’s stupid Oasis during the Before, none of them knew what I was talking about. The only vague answer I got was that we were supposed to be cruel, to protect ourselves.”
“That…” Epani sighed. “That makes sense, I guess. Self-preservation.”
“Forced self-preservation. Detrimental. We don’t NEED to be cruel, we have other ways to protect ourselves. But the Dispa is like an additional ailment, something I am forced to deal with, the same way mortals have to eat, drink, sleep and mate to survive…” Sini glanced at Epani, then smiled weakly. “Luckily, over the millennia, I have found… not a cure, but an alternate way of keeping it down…”
“Hang on!” Kairos interrupted. “Kinisis fucked up her own damn kids? Like, I get my own fate, Kinisis pulled me from a dying universe and I offered to serve and protect her in return, and Kenon, he was literally bound to Kinisis to be her servant and to try and teach him mortal concepts, but she intentionally messed with you two as well?”
“What about Arkay?” Sini asked.
“I guess Arkay made the mistake of existing? I don’t honestly know. He was just an ordinary mortal in the third universe I served Kinisis in, until Kinisis fucked him up as well.”
Sini went back to frowning, but she let the subject drop and turned back to Epani. “Sister, we can fix this. We just need to get the gratification of subjugating someone in a different method, and I have a couple of ideas.”
Epani sat up, giving Sini her full attention.
“Firstly, we can get you something to properly rule over. Someone who worships you the way the Thraki worship Kairos. Yes, the Torr worship you, but they mostly worship an idol of you, not the real you. I think the Rethans and the Lanex no longer wanting to worship you has exacerbated the matter, but that can be solved with some nice bribes for the Lanex at least.
“Secondly, we can sexually gratify you. Now, before you comment, I’m not suggesting you go and rape someone. I used to do that. It… it does satisfy the Dispa, but it’s also morally wrong. However, holding power over someone via controlling their desires and intensity of pleasure? It helps more than you’d think.”
Epani thought to herself, sighed, but said nothing, instead deciding to shrink down to her more Temthan-like form. However, Kairos seemed to have an idea.
“So, we get Epani a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. Someone willing to be submissive. That seems doable. And I’m sure Sini has other plans as well. But Epani, are you willing to do this, to better yourself, to commit to change? Genuine change?”
“I am, yes. I…” Epani stuttered. “I… I have been absolutely awful. I need to change. For you all, for our universe and for all the wonderful mortals we have made to live in it. I have a question though, what do we do with Arkay?”
Kairos shrugged. “I don’t even know where Arkay is. I found the trackers we put in him dumped on the front porch of one of my palaces.”
Sini pulled both Kairos and Epani close. “Arkay is fine, he’s just having a quick nap. Alright, sure, he tried to put himself in a coma but he’s unaware that I intentionally mislabel all the medicine in the lab he stays at, and he’s sleeping right now. But Arkay will sort himself out. He just needs some time to heal, as long as we give him space to do so. You… you will leave him alone, right, Epani?”
Epani nodded. “Yes, of course. I… I am… I was wrong. I see that now. It took a mortal to tell me that. But I will be better.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Sini smiled some more. “I’ll hold you to that. Now, come on, let’s get you laid.”