Arkay stared at his laptop, surprised that it was still on and running. This was actually the first time he’d been home in a couple of days, having spent the last day or so rushing around doing all the chores he had failed to do while he was ill. Thanks to his new, heightened strength, Arkay had managed to get all those things done quicker than normal, and had even had time to repair a few holes in the side of the universe, something he normally had to refer to one of his fellow deities to get done.
But now he was home, and he could finally take a few minutes to himself. And also maybe give his laptop a small break. But as he sat down and inspected what was open, he saw a myriad of messages in the little chat box in the corner. He read through all of them and quickly realized what had happened.
Waiting on his screen was his video game character and that of his online friend, Phovos. Phovos had sent a stream of messages, wondering if Arkay was alright, and had somehow critically given the Whenvern the information he needed to get Arkay fixed up, to solve his small corruption problem. If this stranger from outside his universe hadn’t stuck around and sent those messages, Arkay… would have probably been dead now. Or, at best, sealed away forever, stripped of his consciousness and forced to essentially run on autopilot until the end of the universe.
At first, Arkay wasn’t sure what to say. He needed to say thank you, but he felt words weren’t quite enough. The problem was, Arkay only knew this Phovos person via the video game, they’d never really communicated outside of it. Mostly because Epani and Sini never allowed him to have exouniversal communications. Sure, he did secretly have an account on Wyvern, an online chat and server software used by Decay Lords, but he’d somehow created that without even remembering he did so, and he only ever used it for his online clan, just to post video game updates.
Eventually though, Arkay decided just to send a message to Phovos in-game. In a private message. He didn’t like how Phovos had posted all this information in the clan channel, but, well, no one else seemed to have commented or noticed.
“Hey, Phovos, I wanted to say thank you. You… saved my life.”
There was no response at first. Phovos’s character was present, but was idling, the same way Arkay’s character was. Although Arkay did notice that Phovos was using a different character, one with a new unusual effect. After a few seconds though, Arkay spotted a new message.
“Ah, Arkay! You are alive! You met our associates, yes?”
Phovos’s character sprung to life. They used an emote, bowing in front of Arkay’s character. Arkay did the same back, to be friendly.
“Yeah, I met Kal. They were cute. And they fixed me up and told me I was being held back.”
“Oh? How did that go?”
Another emote. Phovos’s character sat down on the floor, as if waiting for Arkay to talk.
“They said I was filled with power dampeners, that I should have been able to deal with the corruption myself and that I needed to talk to Epani and Sini. Which I did, and, well, I feel stronger than ever.”
“I am very glad to hear that.”
Arkay sighed, not really sure what else to say. While yes, he felt stronger, he also felt kinda bad. Phovos had clearly been waiting for him for this entire time. And he never got around to farming resources with him. From Phovos’s point of view, it all must have been very worrying, since Arkay had literally been kidnapped from his home by his fellow deity, and, well, a lot of coincidences had to happen to make sure Arkay didn’t end up dead.
“I can’t thank you enough, Phovos. You literally saved my life. What can I do to make us even?” Arkay typed.
Again, there wasn’t an instant response. While Phovos wasn’t particularly good at the game, he was normally very, very quick when it came to typing.
“Well, I was just doing what any good Decay Lord would do, helping a deity in need. Doubly so since you are such a nice little deity yourself. I tell you what, you can make it up to me quite easily. I want to have a conversation with you, over voice chat, for once.”
Arkay hesitated. That was a weird request. One he was certain his fellow deities wouldn’t approve of. Then again, Arkay had just managed to convince them to let him be more powerful. This wasn’t too much of a problem. And, thankfully, Arkay had a headset, ready to go, although he hadn’t really used the microphone before. Pretty much no one used voice chat in this video game.
“I can do that. You want to do voice chat here or what?”
“You have Wyvern, right? You must do, there is a link to a server in our clan MOTD.”
“Yeah, you can add me as a friend on there…”
Arkay hit a shortcut key, switching to the desktop. He then opened the Wyvern application and waited for it to update. It’d been a while since he last used it. The first thing he did was check his clan server, looking for the name Phovos, but he didn’t recognize any of the names in the server list. However, a notification popped up, indicating that Arkay had received a friend request. The name didn’t match up at all, but Arkay accepted it anyway. After all, a lot of people had different names on different platforms, Phovos was probably no different.
The Thantophor hit the accept button, then waited.
Another notification. This person was trying to call Arkay. Again, he hit the accept button. A voice slowly trickled through Arkay’s earphones, crackling slightly.
“Hello, Arkay. Can you hear me?”
Arkay didn’t respond. He couldn’t respond. That voice sounded so familiar. As if Arkay had known them for a long time. Arkay took a deep breath and closed his eyes, taking a moment to steady himself before he answered.
“Hey Litvir, it’s been a while. How have you been?”
“Oh, not too bad, dear. You feeling better?”
Arkay smiled. “Yeah, definitely. You have no idea how happy I am to hear your voice.”
“I am very happy to hear your voice too, Arkay. We have some… catching up to do.”