At some point, Dawnbreaker had clearly passed out. The strange, tickly pain, the thumping voices in his head, the fear that he was being taken over, it had been to much for Dawnbreaker and he must have fallen unconscious.
How did Dawnbreaker know that? Simple. He was no longer in his ship. Instead, he was in a nice, sterile, clean room. Three of the walls were blank, but the last had a door and a window, overlooking what looked a bit like a Life Goddess oasis, except a little more sparse. Oddly, the door was open, but just a tiny weeny bit. Just enough for someone to glance in quickly.
Before Dawnbreaker did anything else though, he checked his hand. The scratch was gone, replaced with a faint scar. Dawnbreaker’s skin was already charcoal grey, but the scar was darker than his skin. There also seemed to be slight burn marks on the edge of his arm plating, but as Dawnbreaker rubbed at the dark areas, it seemed to be more like soot than anything else.
Dawnbreaker sighed to himself, then sat up. It seemed that the autopilot on his ship had brought him to this strange place, but Dawnbreaker couldn’t work out how his ship hadn’t crashed, because it lacked an automatic parking setting. Outside the room Dawnbreaker was in, he couldn’t see any debris or explosions or anything. Perhaps Savepoint (“that was what it was called, right?” Dawnbreaker thought) had some sort of tech that stopped ships from just crashing into it. After all, he clearly wasn’t on a large vessel or a Decay Lord sect flagship. He was on solid ground. There was even a lake outside.
Shaking his head, Dawnbreaker glanced outside again. He was pretty sure he saw people wandering around. The nearest beings were a tall, leafy Beh’evok. talking to… someone that looked similar to Dawnbreaker himself. The smaller being was floating in mid air, was holding a gun-staff, a weapon Dawnbreaker used to use when he was mortal, and had black, smoky wisps running up its arms, legs and tail that nicely complimented its bright yellow plating. It looked… way, way too familiar.
The being also seemed to notice that Dawnbreaker was awake. Its eyes glowed blue briefly, then it turned to look at directly at Dawnbreaker. The creature smiled, then disappeared in a black puff. The Beh’evok went back to what it was doing, plodding around as a guard.
Dawnbreaker hesitated for a second, unsure about what he had just seen. However, a knock on the door distracted him.
“Hello, can we come in?”
That voice sounded way too familiar. Dawnbreaker shuddered, then decided to answer.
“Uh… sure…”
The door creaked open. Standing there were three beings. Three beings from Dawnbreaker’s old universe. Three beings that he knew. One of whom glanced at the other two, then immediately charged over and wrapped her arms around Dawnbreaker, smothering him in plating and feathers.
“PSIKSI! YOU’RE ALIVE! I MISSED YOU SO MUCH!” Elksia screeched with joy, not letting go of the hug.
“You lot are… fucking alive?” Psiksi almost growled. He didn’t know if he felt upset, happy or angry. “I thought… I thought our universe imploded or something! I… I have so many questions!”
Elksia briefly loosened her hug, only for Tenuk to join in. Retvik remained by the door, but Psiksi noticed that he was quite different. Mostly just taller, and covered in flames.
“Fucking seriously, what the fuck happened?” Psiksi snarled, trying to wriggle free. Elksia and Tenuk both backed off.
“Long story short, Kinisis got killed and Epani remade the entire universe in her own image…” Tenuk tried to explain. “We all were… kinda outside the universe when that happened.”
“Yeah, but… but… you were… all considered dead before then…” Psiksi stuttered. “We were made to fight the Golden Protectors, but only I returned home, you all disappeared! And then… then… Arksi got stuck running Ξ-Class, Thitaksi got really ill and Eksi… Eksi disappeared... He just messaged me, saying he was getting a new job and would be away for a while, and then…”
Psiksi trailed off, then sighed to himself. He glanced around the room, not really sure where to start.
“Thitaksi had cancer. He wasn’t doing great, was kinda bedridden. But he asked me to try and find Eksi, so the four of us would be together, one last time. So I asked around, and Rethais suggested that maybe Eksi had been hired by the Allbirther for something, since she was recruiting people. He-“
“Wait, you knew Retvik’s stupid High General brother?” Tenuk suddenly blurted.
Psiksi nodded. “Yeah. Let me stay with him for a couple of weeks. After the Voidborn shit, I woke up on the Rethan home world. So I.. I kinda took Tenuk’s old ship Dessi, decided to fly up to that stupid thing Kinisis was building. But suddenly everything… went white. I’m certain I was catapulted out of the universe.”
Tenuk shrugged. “Tahvra and Akah were catapulted out too. They drifted for a month until Kal found them and picked them up.”
“I don’t know how long I was unconscious for. I woke up being tended to by some Thastarii, they called me a fresh new Decayling and I… I kinda just did Decay Lord stuff, mostly Corruption Purges for the Alsyr…”
Again, Psiksi trailed off. He inspected his old friends. They all seemed a little off. Tenuk wasn’t shapeshifted, Elksia had an odd glow to her, and Retvik was… massive. Sure, he’d always looked large back when Psiksi was mortal, but Psiksi was sure he wasn’t as tall as he was now. And he was on fire.
“So you work for the Alsyr now?” Retvik asked.
“Yeah… who do you all work for?”
“Hah!” Elksia giggled. “Tenuk and I technically work for Retvik. He’s the big bad boss of the Thantir!”
Psiksi blinked. “Fuck, YOU are Flamebearer? Who the fuck is Souldrainer then? And… is Arkadin around? I’m pretty sure I saw him outside talking to that big green Beh’en!”
“He calls himself Arkay now,” Retvik grunted. “Arkay, Litvir and I all run the Thantir. There are quite a few of us from our old universe. Including your little brother.”
“Eksi is alive?” Psiksi hissed as he tried to off the bed. “I’m going to fucking murder him!”
“Maybe you should chill out a little first!” Tenuk pushed Psiksi back onto the bed. “You got hurt, we had to fix you up and you kinda can’t leave since Kaytee and Teekay are working on fixing your ship.”
Psiksi did calm down a little bit. “Damn. I… I ought to get in touch with my sect. Probably all wondering if I’m alive or not.”
Retvik grunted some more. “I will have Litvir call Stormshade, and let him know what happened and that you are here with us. But you are welcome to stay here as long as you like.”
“Well, clearly I fucking need to. Seems like a lot of shit has happened in the last year and a half…” Psiksi sighed. “I’ll be blunt though, it’s fucking nice to see some familiar faces. And I’m glad you all made it…”
Elksia gave Psiksi another hug, then took him by the hand. “Come on! Let us show you around! So you can meet everyone!”
Psiksi hesitated some more, but he eventually smiled. “Yeah, sure thing, Elksia…”