“Can I? Can I can I can I can I pretty please?”
Kairos glared at the begging baby Time Drake. When he had saved the broken, beaten demi-god after a vicious fight against Voidborns, he couldn’t have imagined he’d end up standing here, arms annoyingly crossed, acting like an actual parental figure to the strange being he had created.
“Can you what? You have been standing there for a minute asking to do something and not telling me what that something is.”
Elksia paused, staring rather blankly back at the Whenvern. She was a vastly different being now, especially compared to only a few months ago. Up until recently, Elksia had been a retired Vrekan soldier, deciding to take a break after a lifetime of adventures and excitement. She was getting old. Yet she had been powerful enough to hear and respond to Kairos’s signal when he needed soldiers.
On the battlefield, fighting an enemy she had never seen before, Elksia cut through the Voidborn army like butter. There was a ferocity in the Vrekan warrior that dwarfed even the larger, more impressive beasts that Kairos had summoned. Yet she had been weirdly elegant. At least up until the point that an entire legion of Voidborn monsters tore her down, to the point that she was unrecognisable.
“Oh. I’m doing the thing again…” Elksia frowned. “I got time mixed up again, didn’t I?”
“You did. Let’s rewind and have you tell me what you wanted permission for.”
Elksia paused again, but this time she smiled. These days, she looked nothing like a Vrekan. Her feathers were gone, her armour plating had been replaced and her beak, well, that had to be replaced. Kairos had believed she was some sort of Temthan and fixed her up accordingly, only to discover that not only was Elksia not Temthaic in any way, but she was also… one of Kairos’s former enemies.
Somehow Kairos had ended up reviving and mentoring one of the four beings that had royally fucked up his plans nearly half a century prior. Considering one of the other three was a demi-god Kronospast and the other was literally the old God of Death, Kairos wasn’t too happy when he discovered he had just adopted a mortal enemy. And made them immortal.
Still, it turned out Elksia wasn’t too bad once one got to know her. She was bouncy and excitable but she clearly had a good heart.
“I wanted to invite my friends here!”
“Which friends?”
“I had a call… no… wait… that hasn’t happened yet… I wanted to call Retvik and Tenuk and Arkay and see if they wanted to have a get-together!”
“Oh…” Kairos grunted. “THOSE friends…”
Elksia started bouncing up and down again. “Can I please invite them! I wanna have a slumber party in the attic! We’ll roast marshmallows and be completely out of your way! It’ll be great!”
“You do realise you have study to do, right?” Kairos grumbled, not liking the idea at all. Especially since he knew that Retvik was about as strong as he was now, and Kairos had only recently gotten rid of Arkay. And he didn’t even want to consider Tenuk, especially as he was now serving Kinisis directly.
“I have loads of time to study!” Elksia beamed. “All the time in the universe or whatever! Please can we have a slumber party? I miss my friends. Especially Arkay! Haven’t seen him properly in ages!”
The Whenven rolled his eyes, then relented. “Fine. But if you make a mess, I will be very, very upset. Any mess you make, any trace of them being here, I want it all cleaned up when they’re gone. And you are to keep them out of my way. Understood?”
Elksia nodded, then excitedly bounced out of the room. “Thank you, Kairos! Thank you thank you thank you!”