Arkadin sighed as he continued to dig, shoveling earth down a deep, dark hole. All around him were abandoned buildings, all shaken up by a recent earthquake Arkadin had accidentally caused. The hole he was trying to fill had been a church dedicated to the Thantophor himself, but most of the structure had collapsed into an underneath cave system, destroying the ancient skeletal statues and decorations that had littered the small, Banikan village.
Up above, a familiar winged creature was gliding around, watching Arkadin work. Arkadin knew exactly who and what the creature was: the being was Kairos, the Dragon God of Time, flying around like some stupid Thraki rather than doing his own duties. Arkadin hadn’t actually spoken to his fellow deity in a few weeks and right now, he didn’t want to. So he carried on working.
The dragon continued to soar while Arkadn continued to work. It turned out that this Banikan village would have eventually been swallowed up by the underlying caves, but of course Arkadin had accidentally sped things up by a few thousand years. What made Arkadin feel worse was that this was a tribe that had actively worshiped Arkadin, and now they had all scattered, believing they had been betrayed by their own god.
As far as Arkadin was concerned, they were right. He had betrayed them. He had crushed their place of worship, torn through the ground and made their village unstable. While Arkadin may have been able to repair the hole he had made, the damage caused would have made the ground vulnerable to further collapse over the next hundred or so years. The Banikans would have had to move, no matter what.
What hurt more though was that prayers towards Arkadin had all but dried up. There were almost no prayers aimed in his direction at all. In fact, the only prayers Arkadin had received lately had been from, ironically, necromancers, asking for his permission for… something. Normally, Arkadin would have hunted the necromancers down and killed them for desecrating the dead, but the last few necromancers he had encountered had already asked the dead’s next of kin for permission to do what they were planning on doing, AND they had tried to speak to Arkadin first. Of course, due to recent events, Arkadin had been unable to answer them and the necromancers had proceeded anyway (after all, trying to revive the dead can often be quite a time-restrictive activity) but it was the thought that counted.
Between the lack of prayers from others, the lack of worship from mortal races in general, the takeover of one of the few races that at least respected Arkadin, their attention being drawn to another deity and the loss of faith from associated races that were left scrambling in the chaos, the last few days had been particularly lonely.
Arkadin paused for a moment, inspecting his shovel. He had bent it slightly on a particularly hard piece of rock. He straightened it out, then straightened himself out. His physical form had gone a bit sloppy. He wasn’t even quite sure what his physical form was right now. Ever since Kenon, the God of the Void, had… hijacked up the worshipers that used to follow Arkadin and changed his form to match them, the Thantophor had noticed his own form had begun to slip, from his familiar, Threanic looks to something… something else.
The circling Time God above seemed to be getting bored. Arkadin stopped what he was doing and watched them for a bit. Eventually, the Whenvern stopped circling and drifted off into the distance. It was only when the Time God passed the planet’s sun, his silhouette casting a shadow across the landscape, that Arkadin realized just how large the Whenvern was. He also realized how much time had gone by, and why he was filling said hole in the first place.
There were things Arkadin had to do. Things that required communicating with the other deities.
With a sigh, Arkadin went back to work, filling that hole. His other obligations would just have to wait until later.