“Little brother!” Sini nearly screeched as she caught sight of the Thantophor. Arkay was currently in the middle of crushing up bits of Voidborn and chucking them out through a hole in the side of the universe. A hole the Voidborn had made. Normally, Arkay looked pretty well armoured and muscular, but today he was rather skinny and almost gaseous, bits of his body just sort of floating there.
Arkay ignored Sini’s calls at first, but as she approached him directly, he turned to face her. He didn’t say anything though.
“Arkay, you… you… I…” The Allbirther struggled to get her sentences out. She’d been looking for Arkay for a while. Sure, Kairos had informed her of the fact that Arkay had gone cold and was no longer in contact with mortals, but she hadn’t been able to speak to Arkay directly. After recent years, Sini had realized that, to best protect her precious universe, she needed Arkay to be happy, and Kairos’s and Epani’s demands for Arkay to go cold were ruining that. “You look awful.”
Arkay nodded, then went back to work.
“Brother, when was the last time you spoke to someone?”
Arkay shrugged and continued working.
“Answer the question.”
“26th.”
A brief answer. And not an answer Sini liked. Arkay hadn’t spoken to anyone in five whole days. And he probably hadn’t uttered a single word either. The Thantophor was steadily growing more and more depressed and this concerned Sini greatly. The whole point of Arkay going cold was to prevent him from losing his mind and turning into a potentially universe-destroying scenario. But if Arkay was depressed, surely he could lose his mind anyway? And, annoyingly, Kairos and Epani had been very sparse with the details, meaning Sini was out of the loop.
“Alright, that’s bad. When was the last time you had something to eat?”
“26th.”
“When was the last time you slept?”
“26th…”
“That’s… also bad… where are you staying?”
Arkay hesitated. “Uh…”
“You’re not living in that apartment on Portalia. I checked. Where are you staying?”
“I… I’m… I’m not.” Arkay finally started talking normally, but his voice was tattered and broken. “I put my belongings in storage.”
“Where do you go to rest?”
“Nowhere.”
Sini tutted, loudly and angrily. She helped Arkay push the rest of the dead Voidborn through the hole in the side of the universe, then grabbed the edges of the hole and pulled them together, using her tail to sew the hole shut with special, cosmic threads. She then turned to Arkay, took him by the arm and dragged him through a pink portal to one of her cosier labs.
“I know Kairos and Epani told you to go cold, but this is too far!” Sini hissed as she forced Arkay into a large, fluffy chair, then pulled over a table. With a snap of her fingers, a bag of marshmallows and two cans of sugar-free energy drinks, a cheap, strawberry flavoured off-brand, appeared on the table. Sini then sat in a massive, heavily cushioned throne in front of Arkay. “Eat.”
Arkay sighed and did as he was told, eating a couple of marshmallows and sipping one of the cans of drink. With another sigh, Arkay began to relax and turned into one of his more normal forms.
“You’re not looking after yourself.”
“It’s a bit hard to when I have to sever all connections with anything remotely nice!” Arkay hissed. His voice was still weak, but he was clearly angry and upset. “I have to spend the next decade knowing what I am missing, yet again unable to help! I don’t want to be the faceless enemy of the universe again, I want to make things better! Yet I have to go away, because if I do try to make things better, I’ll… I’ll turn into Arkidetelos again!”
Sini blinked as she inspected Arkay. “That makes no sense.”
“What?”
“The turning into Arkidetelos thing. We got rid of that.”
Arkay leaned forward, snarling. “What.”
“Epani and I removed that errant schizophrenic personality. Kinisis made it as a fail-safe in case another Life Goddess attempted to tamper with you. We kinda had to, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to resurrect you without you instantly going insane and killing everyone.”
The Thantophor opened his mouth, but said nothing. He opened and closed his mouth a few more times. “I… can’t turn into Arkidetelos?”
“No. I mean, you could still go insane and start murdering things, but the specific change into Arkidetelos, that horrible side of you is definitely dead. It was literally the first thing we did to you, prompted by something Kairos showed us back in the Before, a long time ago…” Sini paused. She realized that Arkay was genuinely very confused and angry. “I thought you knew?”
Arkay downed his drink, then crushed the can between his claws. “I thought I was battling against mental illness and won. Not that you both just surgically removed a part of me.”
“Well, you’ve also been battling mental illness. And you were winning until this… setback… Did Epani and Kairos tell you that you’d turn into Arkidetelos?”
“No…” Arkay shook his head. “I could sense the pain and anger and hatred and hunger brewing. A burning rage. But I never saw past that in my future flashes.”
“Did Kairos see anything?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did Kairos also get future flashes?” Sini repeated herself. “If you saw a future where you became a monster, surely Kairos would see something too? I definitely didn’t see anything, and I get future flashes the same way you and Kairos do.”
“I… I don’t know. But he looked into my head and confirmed what I saw was definitely… possible.”
Sini frowned. She didn’t like where this was going. And she was getting pretty annoyed herself, to the point that she was wondering whether Kairos or Epani had been intentionally messing with Arkay. After all, they had both been unhappy with Arkay’s recent independence and his presence among mortals. But right now, Sini didn’t have any real, concrete proof.
That being said, Sini did suddenly have a few ideas. After all, she needed Arkay to be happy, so he’d continue to be cooperative, but also so he’d been having a positive effect on existence on his own, helping out mortals in political ways that the other deities didn’t really care about. But, on top of that, Sini just wanted her little brother to be happy on his own.
“Alright, we have to fix this. Just because you have to go cold, doesn’t mean you have to be utterly miserable and throw EVERYTHING away. You need a place to live at least.”
“I…”
“No, shut it. You’re gonna grab your stuff out of storage and I’m going to give you a room in one of my labs. Not this one because it’s my nicest lab, but you’ll have a bed, a sofa, a desk, a place to put your belongings and access to a proper kitchen and bathroom. Kairos and Epani may see you as a lesser god but you at the very least deserve the same things mortals deserve. In case Epani decides that this would be you ‘owning’ land, you’ll pay some sort of ceremonial rent to me. Like, draw me up some ideas for new creatures or something. I’ll work that out later, but you NEED a home.”
Arkay lowered his head. “Uh, thank you…”
Sini wagged her finger at Arkay. “I’m not done yet. While yes, you have to avoid direct contact with mortals, I still want you to… stay somewhat close to them. And I know exactly how to do that. Without triggering Epani or Kairos.”
Arkay hesitated, then leaned forward “… How?”
“You turn yourself into a small animal. Like, an owl or a bat or something. Something that mortals disregard. Maybe don’t turn into a pigeon on Portalia near where your Phantasma buddy lives, but if you shapeshift into an animal, no one will know you are there and you retain some level of closeness without actually being close.”
The Thantophor thought to himself, then looked up at Sini, feeling confused. “That could work, but it is weird.”
“I have one condition though.”
“What is it?”
“I want you to do something amusing and silly while in said animal form. Like, I dunno, interrupting a sports match by running across the field or doing a fly-by poop on a politician during a speech or something. Something stupid.”
“Is that… is that it?”
Sini nodded. “Yep! Because you need distractions while you remain on low contact. Because there’s a chance that going completely cold and doing what you were doing before and having too much contact could both lead to the same thing. Plus, it’d annoy Epani.”
“Heh…” Arkay smiled weakly, then picked at the skin on his hand. In one swift movement, Arkay pulled his skin away and turned into a large, black cat. He jumped across the table and sat in Sini’s lap. “Thank you, sister.”
“Hey now, don’t mention it, little brother!” Sini beamed as she gently petted Arkay. “We all deserve to be happy. Even you.”