In order to curry favour with the Life Goddess currently working as a part time Time Drake, Sini had a little house built away from the normal housing area of Savepoint, complete with a picnic table out the front which overlooked Savepoint’s lake. That was where Sini was sitting currently, after having just finished her shift. She was alone, watching the water ripples, but quickly sensed someone approaching.
“Heya, Litvir. Finally got the courage to speak to me?”
Most old-universe Rethans were quiet, somewhat grumpy beings who didn’t openly broadcast their emotions. Litvir always did, partially because he was never truly connected to the Rethan Secret, the low level telepathic network all old-universe Rethans shared. But the main reason was that showing his emotions made controlling Litvir’s powerful telepathy much easier. Today, Litvir’s teeth were bared and his eyes were dull, showing that he was blatantly annoyed and angry.
“It is not courage I require, but the strength to not harm you in anger!” Litvir hissed as he made his way over. In his hand was a wad of paper wrapped up in a battered yellow file. Behind him were some drinks, two unopened bottles of fizzy diet cola and some sort of fruity cocktail. Litvir did his best to not spill the drinks or slam them on the table.
Sini swivelled herself round to face Litvir. Litvir was a tall Rethan and was still growing, despite being over a century old. The former Allbirther easily reached 4m tall and was stupidly long as well, what with her being serpent-like.
“In all honesty, I don’t think you can really hurt me, Litvir. You’re a telepath yes, a pretty damn good one, but we both know that time manipulation means you’ll never have the chance to react. Still! We have much to discuss! And the first thing you are going to tell me is why you are so grumpy right now.”
“You would be grumpy if one partner is spending all his spare time guarding an egg and the other is being worked overtime in a duty he dislikes because Time Drakes are in short supply around here. The quicker that damn egg hatches, the better.”
Litvir grunted, then sat down, nudging a drink over to Sini before opening his file. He flicked through the first few pages, then grunted some more.
“I was going to have all of this planned out. I have a long list of questions and things I demand answers to. I was going to go into detail. I was going to burrow down into everything. But the most burning question I have is… why did you let Siona Kaldieridos and his scientist minions do all of that? Why did you let Siona lay eggs and torture them?”
Sini looked Litvir up and down, then tutted. “You’re really not going to like my answer.”
“I do not care if I will like or dislike your answer. I just want to know.”
“Well,, simply put… I forgot.”
Litvir blinked, feeling very caught off guard by Sini’s answer. “You… forgot?”
“Yep. Occasionally, hyper-fertile beings pop up. I generally watch them and guide them to have lots of kids, to try and spur something big. The same time Siona appeared, I was watching another hyper-fertile being, a Temthan by the name of Aspri Thyra, and she had some strong genetics. Natural resistances to common illnesses and she was more resistant to the cold, something old-universe Temthans sometimes struggled with. And she did exactly what I wanted her to do. She had as many different kids as possible with as many different males as possible, and inserted herself everywhere. Her grand kids were the first to settle on what was otherwise an icy abandon-world, allowing the Temthans overall to spread to new environments.”
“So… you were… too busy watching someone else?” Litvir asked.
Sini nodded. “Yep. I hadn’t really seen a hyper-fertile Rethan before, didn’t know what one would look like, so I somewhat overlooked Siona, doubly because Siona decided early on that he would do what Aspri Thyra was doing. So I just left Siona to his own devices, then forgot about him. He was doing everything in secret anyway.”
“When… when did you find out?” Litvir tried to hide his unease.
“When Siona started sending out suicide attackers. Considering that Siona had sixty years to plan everything out and did everything so badly, I was mostly just annoyed. So I would just check in occasionally to see if Siona made any babies that had any real reproductive value. The answer was a big, fat NO, because Siona also had a ton of genetic defects he was passing down to all his kids. So I stopped caring until Siona started making something decent. You and your clutch of 20 eggs. Siona’s first set of eggs that, if Siona had left alone, would have actually been equivalent to bloodline tradition Rethans. But Siona ruined those too. And you killed most of them.”
“I… I think you can see why…” Litvir muttered.
“Oh, you and Kuta dropping a building on Siona and killing pretty much everyone was when I realised that maybe I should have paid more attention. Including you two, only fifteen Kaldieridoi survived, and most died in the following year. Only two other Kaldieridoi survived for a decent amount of time and did anything of note. The egg Kuta saved, their name was Reliir, they were placed in the same nursery little Elkay was, and, completely oblivious to their heritage, served in the 471st Legion alongside Elkay but was killed in the same attack that got Elkay promoted to General. On the other hand, Veliir, someone who helped you kill Siona, he lived a half-decent life on Portalia, and became the Rethan house fighter known as Vel. Everyone else, either you killed them or they killed themselves.”
Litvir sighed, but didn’t say anything. He eventually muttered a sentence. “You let a lot of people suffer.”
“So did you.”
“I did not know better.”
“You did. We both did. We just had to look around and learn from others. It took us way too long to work that out. Difference is, I’m part of nature. Nature is deadly. Existence is deadly. Doesn’t excuse my actions, but I’m literally the personification of natural selection. Mortals though, intelligent ones, I think they’re supposed to be better. You come together as a society to make life liveable. You were just a monster. Just like your mum. You got better, but it’s all still on you.”
Sini tutted, waiting for Litvir to put together some sort of comeback. But he didn’t open his mouth at all. Not for a while. Eventually, he looked up at Sini, sighed to himself, then got up and left, without saying a word.