“Thanks for agreeing to come with us, Akah!” Leh clicked with excitement as the ship Shield Six began to slow down, approaching what looked like a dark, rocky mass ahead. “Normally we’d be doing this stuff in secret, but you and your four-finger-and-a-thumb hands and lean, upright, tail-less form are so, so helpful when it comes to setting things up and moving things around!”
Akah shrugged as he leaned on the back of the co-pilot’s chair, where Koh was silently doing various scans. “It’s not a problem. I somewhat wanted to get off that ship for a bit. And with pretty much everyone having migraines and being angry at me for not having telepathy, I thought I should probably stay away for a bit…” Akah paused briefly. “Can I ask, did people see you six differently when you became Decay Lords?”
“Oh, totally!” Leh clicked some more. “Everyone was like “by the Nest, those six freaks in two bodies actually did it!” and a lot of the Metrum were randomly quite awkward with us. Didn’t know how to approach us, since we were suddenly equals. You done yet, Koh?”
Koh also clicked. Clicking was probably the most common sound on Shield Six. Akah couldn’t complain, he occasionally clicked too, whenever he was frustrated. “Sorry, was just doing the calculations for setting down our package. You should be good to go, Leh.”
“Wonderful!”
The ship slowed down even more. Normally, it travelled quite quickly, despite being utterly ancient. But today, Shield Six was towing something. Heavy, metal and plastic slabs. A pop-up building kit. The first parts of a new base for the Thantir, the Decay Lord sect that had finally given Kal a home, ever since the Metrum, Kal’s original sect, had split up.
The location for this new base was a large, floating island within the Kinigian Wilderness. The Kinigian Wilderness was somewhat newly renamed. Originally, the sector had no name what so ever, and most of it was uncharted, with the edges just being considered parts of the nearby Ventra Expanse, Goldtorn Remains and Shadefern Straights. When the Thantir originally entered the territories and claimed them as their own, they had named a small chunk of it the Phovon Gap, but after the death of Kinisis, the main Life Goddess presence in the sector and a being of Phantai legend, the few remaining locals renamed the sector to the Kinigian Wilderness, in the powerful Zontanian’s memory.
This place however was also somewhat close to the boundaries of the Goldtorn Remains, and wasn’t too far off from the Athata Rift, a thin strip of void with very fast-flowing periuniversal winds, which acted as a speedy shortcut to the Ventra Expanse. Such a piece of land would have been very valuable, had a smaller Voidborn cult that had guarded the Rift not been recently destroyed. A lack of nearby facilities and the vast distance to the nearest proper safe zone also dropped the value of the island massively. In fact, the Life Goddess that had sold the island to Kal seemed desperate to be rid of the property and had practically given it away.
Not that the island was that nice. The centre of the island was fine. It contained nothing more than a small, ruined villa, with a tiny lake, beach and pier nearby. There had been a forest, but most of it seemed to have been burnt down. What was more troubling was the wall of black and gold spikes that circled most of the island’s edge. While all six of Kal did agree that the spikes, which appeared to be made out of dead Voidborn plating, did look very cool, the spikes didn’t look particularly inviting. The Thantir were moving into the duties of purification, they needed their new base to look welcoming, since people would be coming to them for aid.
For now though, the spikes were staying. They were acting as camouflage while Kal set up the first set of buildings. The collection of pop-up homes Kal had purchased would give the Thantir their own places to rest while they worked on the main facilities, and refurbishing the villa.
That was also why they’d brought Akah along. Sure, he was definitely useful when it came to heavy lifting and fiddly work that needed extra fingers, but he was also a good baseline as to what a normal Decayon actually needed. Kal were mechanical beings, they didn’t need to breathe, eat, drink, sleep, or, well, do anything. Akah did. Well, he didn’t need to breathe, most beings in the Periuniversal Void didn’t, but, like most formerly mortal beings, Akah inhaled and exhaled out of habit, despite being aware that breathing was pointless.
At the same time, Akah was the perfect average height of the Thantir, standing at about 2.2m tall, settling in perfectly between the tallest of the Thantir (Itaviir, at just over 4m) and Kal themselves (who were all 1m tall exactly). The pop-up buildings would scale up to whatever size was needed, and, since they didn’t want to bring any of the Tattered Navigators along, the other former Decaylings were all still celebrating and they wanted to surprise Retvik and Litvir, Akah was, well, the best choice, so Kal could get the sizes of the pop-up buildings vaguely right.
Leh landed the ship on the beach by the pier, so they had plenty of space to get things done. Once everything was locked up, he and Koh both got up, and Akah followed them as they grabbed the others.
“So, who did you buy this place from?” Akah asked as he and Kal all exited Shield Six. He took a moment to survey the landscape. Something about it felt weird. Akah didn’t have telepathy, time powers or anything allowing him to see the metaphysical, but he swore that something horrible had once happened here. However, Akah pushed that feeling to one side as Koh asked him to help unclip the trailer from the back of Shield Six.
“Bought it off a Life Goddess!” Pah clicked enthusiastically. “I like buying random floating rocks with my exuberant Deathven-sponsored income, saw this place on sale for cheap, convinced the others to come and have a look and we sealed the deal within an hour of stepping foot here!”
“Because of or in spite of the large, black and gold spikes and the clearly burnt down forest?” Akah glanced around, stepping back so Gah and Nuh could start organizing things.
“Both?” Pah shrugged. He started getting to work removing burnt wooden stubs, basically clearing away the remains of the forest.
Leh attempted to help Pah, but blowing up the stumps wasn’t nearly as effective. “I think the big black spikes add to the charm. Although we’ll probably get rid of some of them, gonna need to work out a proper flow to the place once we’ve added the clinic and work buildings. Not to mention parking.”
“We’ll work that out later!” Nuh snapped. “We gotta set up accommodation first!”
They’d bought 40 pop-up building room-blocks, but were only going to set up 25 of them for now, so that every member of the Thantir could have their own home. Two buildings would be set up as showers and bathrooms, one would act as a kitchen and the last two would be a communal area and office. The room-blocks could all be connected together with segmented pathways and staircases, and would provide cheap living spaces until more permanent structures could be built.
With some help from Gah, Nuh started placing the room-blocks how he wanted them to look, The first ten room-blocks were set to an 8m x 8m size then laid out in a row, and the next set of 10 room-blocks made slightly smaller and were placed on top. While they worked, Akah moved some smaller, metal blocks behind the main room-blocks. These were generators, and Tah and Koh started to wire up each room, providing them with electricity, water, heating and a tiny atmosphere of mostly nitrogen. Once those were set up, Nuh built the walkways and stairs for each floor, while Gah arranged the bathroom, office, kitchen and communal area blocks at a right angle to the bedroom blocks.
“This tech is… very convenient…” Akah muttered to Tah and Koh as they worked, assisting them in getting wires and pipes through more fiddly places.
“It’s pretty common, actually…” Koh explained. “A TON of Deathven-based gear is designed to be like this. We even have this tech on Shield Six, the Thantir Two AND the old Thantir One. Three years ago, before your Kinisis screwed things up, Shield Six only had two sleeping rooms and we just mostly slept in the cockpit anyway. The Shimmering Blade is a custom-built ship as far as I’m aware, but the Thantir One was a pretty standard DIY adaptive sect vessel. Those are way more expensive than these pop-up buildings though, and the price for sect vessels has skyrocketed over recent years.”
“How comes?”
“No idea. There have been rumours for years though that Deathven Proper has wanted to pull back ever since the Great Splot, the idea being that it’s better to have massive strongholds over smaller groups running self-governed sects.”
“Ah…” Akah trailed off, thinking to himself briefly. “So you… bought this off a Life Goddess? You… didn’t buy it off someone related to Kinisis, did you?”
Tah glanced at Koh, and Koh glanced at Akah.
“Kinisis had siblings?”
Akah clicked in annoyance and waggled a finger at Koh. “Have you all been completely unaware of the whole Holy Mothers Life Goddess stuff the Phantai go on about?”
“Yes, but…” Koh hesitated. “I think all the Life Goddesses in the Patagenic Pentacluster are related to each other, having originated from the old Golden Paradise. I think that Syklas Life Goddess, the first client you Thantir took, she was Kinisis’s cousin or something. The Life Goddess we bought this place from was called Athanatea, but she only vaguely recognized the Thantir as “that sect that used to be here then left” and only mentioned Kinisis because, well, everyone mentions Kinisis.”
“That name sounds… vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it. Sorry, I’m probably just being paranoid.” Akah sighed.
Tah patted Akah on the leg. “It’s fine! Considering what you lot went through, I’m surprised you’re not more paranoid. Anyway, we should crack on. The faster we get everything set up, the faster we can start doing our own thing and the faster we can build a badass base for ourselves!”
“Sure thing…” Akah sighed once more, putting his unease to one side and going back to work.