Arkay had been right behind him, but suddenly he wasn’t there. The Whenvern turned round and found that Arkay had stopped in his tracks.
“Veth Prime, is something wrong?”
“We need to go back to Kinigi, right now.”
Kairos blinked. “Why?”
“Stasis has broken through. He’s trying to attack Kinisis!”
“Oh.”
Arkay was about to fly off in a hurry, when Kairos grabbed his tail, stopping him from doing so.
“Kairos! I have to go save her!”
“Yes but how?”
The Veth Prime paused. “I… I don’t know. I’ll probably just stab the Corruption like I did last time.”
“You will stab Stasis? Good luck with that.”
Kairos was acting weird. It was annoying Arkay. He whipped his tail away from Kairos and zoomed off. The Whenvern simply tutted then teleported in front of Arkay.
“I worry it will not work.”
“So do I…” Arkay sighed. “I mean, I willingly stabbed myself. I don’t even know if Stasis is fighting it… Maybe… if we had a more pure source, rather than my standard dagger…”
“Like your brother.” Kairos was smiling now. “Your brother is 50% Corruption. Perhaps if he personally helps, maybe it will stop Stasis even if he is not fighting the Corruption now?”
“He’s the leader of a race of mortals though, I’m not allowed to… Well, I know this is an emergency but…”
“It is not a problem.”
Kairos smiled again, then closed his eyes, concentrating deeply. A wave of silver energy exploded out of him. All around them, time seemed to slow down, stopping almost completely.
Arkay rolled his eyes. “You should have done that as soon as I told you Stasis had broken through. How long can you hold that?”
“About…” the Whenvern grunted slightly, then rummaged around in his pocket. He handed a blade to Arkay. “I can do this for about twenty four hours. That blade will break the spell on anything affected by the slowing of time. Get going.”
The Veth Prime did as he was told, zooming off into the distance.
…
“WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE LIGHT IS GOING ON?” Elkay screamed as everything was frozen around him. “WHAT THE FUCK?”
“Calm down, brother…” Arkay sighed. “Everything’s just frozen to minimize any damage Stasis might do while he’s unwell.”
“No, I will not fucking calm down!” Elkay paced up and down, pausing only to drink an entire jug of water. “I wish I was an alcoholic. This would make so much more sense right now.”
“It doesn’t make any sense to me either…” Arkay didn’t really know what to say. “Luckily, the plan isn’t complicated. Once we have Stasis subdued, all you have to do is poke him repeatedly in the Corrupted bits and he should be fine.”
“Should be fine?” Clearly the Veth’s words had done nothing to sooth Elkay’s fears. “SHOULD? Do you have any idea what is going on? Do you? Because as far as I can tell, since you died, the whole universe has been falling apart!”
Arkay hesitated. He didn’t feel insulted. If anything, he felt that Elkay’s words were true. Either things were always this bad, maybe it was just coincidence, or maybe… Arkay pushed those thoughts away. There was no time for them now.
“I’m sorry, Elkay. I get it too. Everything is wrong and bad. It feels like it’s always my fault. It can’t be, that’s just how it feels. But I’d rather make sure that everything survives and the universe keeps turning, rather than than do nothing and watch it all die.”
Elkay paced up and down a bit more, then finally relented. “Fine. Fine. Let us fix this nonsense and go back to normal…”