“You seem tired.”
Retvik was doubled over in his chair, breathing heavily, utterly exhausted after having to run away from and completely incinerate a small swarm of corrupted beings. Really, Retvik found Galyn’s comment rather insulting.
“Just a little tired…” Retvik finally grunted, his pulse settling down. “All of… that… whatever it was, it was very worrying and scary. Corruption scares the life out of me.”
“As it should…” Galyn grunted, stretching out his arms, before swivelling his own chair round to face Retvik. “Corruption is understandably a bad thing. But you are not tired due to concerns of Corruption. There is something else with you.”
After a long, deep breath, Retvik finally started to calm down. At the very least, he couldn’t feel his heart pounding against his lungs and inner ribcage any more.
“Do you know what it is? Because I feel rather awful right now. Never thought being a deity would be so darn stressful.”
Galyn looked Retvik up and down, studying him intently. It took Galyn a few moments to work out what the problem was.
“You still think you are mortal.”
Retvik grunted. “I am clearly not mortal.”
“So why do you still act like you are?”
“Well… what do you mean?”
“You are breathing heavily and have a heartbeat that is beating loudly. Mortals have hearts and breathe. Deities do not.”
Retvik grunted some more, really uncertain on how to respond to Galyn’s comment. Breathing and having a beating heart were basically all Retvik knew. He didn’t want to admit it, but he had quite a few other mortal hang ups as well. He still had a desire to eat food on a regular basis, he still needed to go to the bathroom and, weirdly, his levels of sexual desires had only increased, ever since he’d become a deity.
Really, the bathroom thing was the worst, mainly because it turned out most bathrooms in the Decay Lord ships didn’t actually have toilets. Retvik was glad he came from a species that only produced liquid waste.
“How do I stop that then? How do I convince myself I am a deity?”
Galyn frowned, realising he didn’t have an answer. “It will take time. But tell me, Retvik, how long were you a deity for, before your universe died?”
Retvik pondered the question, then shrugged. “About a day? Not that I remember any of it. I was locked away in a cell beforehand and then forcefully turned into a deity. It was not very enjoyable, as far as I remember.”
“A…” Retvik’s response seemed to have struck a chord with Galyn. “A day? As in… Approximately 30 hours?”
“A day for me was always 24 hours, but yes. Not very long.”
Galyn snorted, the first time Retvik had seen the Decay Lord exhale in a long time. “That… makes much more sense now. Why you act and react the way you do. You are stuck with mortal thoughts because you have spent more time as a mortal than you have as a deity.”
“Is that bad?” Retvik asked.
“Depends. You can adapt somewhat easily, but your mortal strings are holding you back. But to get past your mortal strings, you simply need to spend more time as a deity.”
Finally, Retvik’s heart rate had settled down, and his breathing had returned to normal. He turned to Galyn and smiled. “That is good to hear, at least. I am glad to know that all of this is just inexperience…”
Galyn nodded in agreement. “Well, it is early days for you. Very early days…”