“This place is way bigger than I thought…”
It had taken a while, but the small group of Decaylings had finally found what they were looking for. At the information desk of a currently desolate shop, there was a large sign showing a rough map. On it was an arrow stating their current location, as well as a huge amount of icons, long thin paths and various other tidbits of information, but, as far as maps go, this one wasn’t particularly useful. Mostly because it recommended taking teleportals everywhere.
“Why can’t we take the teleportals again?” Kalis asked, pointing at a place on the centre of the map. “Would make our lives way easier.”
Vetal rolled his eyes. “That voice from the PA System is almost certainly having minions patrolling the place. It’s guaranteed that she has a bunch of minions at the teleportal stations.”
“I think the more important question is whether we can even reach the security area…” Arkay muttered, keeping himself quiet. “If there are minions at the teleportal thingies, surely there’ll be minions at the security centre as well?”
The other three Decaylings all stared at Arkay.
“That…” Vetal stuttered, “is a really good point.”
“But what else can we do though?” Ksatah exclaimed. “We can’t just hide and wait for it all to go away, we have to do something!”
“Like what?”
Ksatah hesitated. “Uh… maybe if we… fight this Life Goddess?”
Ksatah’s response received mixed emotions. Vetal clearly thought that his long-time friend had gone insane. But when he glanced over at Kalis and Arkay, they both seemed somewhat swayed.
“We are NOT going to fight her! The bitch is a Life Goddess, she’s too powerful for us! Just look at what she’s already done!”
“Yeah but…” Kalis straightened himself out. “We are Life Goddesses too! We could fight back!”
“But none of us have actually trained to use our Life Goddess powers. And even then, we’d clearly be fighting against this entire ship!”
“It would be four against one though!” Kalis did his best to explain. “Sure we’re kinda weak but we’re all half-Life Goddess…”
“So two against one?” Ksatah interrupted.
“Yeah, two whole goddesses or four half goddesses, whatever,” Kalis continued. “But what else can we do? Because no one will come to rescue us!”
“You… think that?” Ksatah’s eyes widened. “Are we really… on our own?”
“We simply don’t know. We ju-”
“SSSSHH!” Arkay suddenly hissed, pulling the others close to him, then making everyone drop down.
“What the… oh…”
Something had suddenly illuminated across the shop, entering the same way the Decaylings did. At first glance, it looked like a glowing ball of light. But on a closer inspection, this being had glowing white flames rippling across their body. These flames were similar to those the four half-Life Goddesses had, except inverted and incredibly bright and white, compared to the black and nebula-like hues of their own flames.
The four Decaylings remained silent, watching the being walk around. Underneath the bright flames, there seemed to be some sort of Decay Lord, heavily hunched over and a blinding flame of light covering its eyes. After a few moments though, the being grunted and left, the same way it had come in.
“That’s terrifying…” Kalis telepathically muttered. “You think that was… one of the evil bitch’s minions?”
“I think it was a mind-controlled Decay Lord. Kinda like what happened to Vikalos.”
“That makes sense…” Vetal grunted. “Maybe you guys are right, maybe we do need to fight back…”
“One small hitch with that,” Arkay frowned. “We need to get these ability dampener collars off before we do anything else. So we can, like, actually use our half-selves.”
Everyone turned back to the map, then sighed.
“Still a long way off…” Vetal tutted.
“It’s a plan though!” Ksatah exclaimed. “Better than nothing!”
“We should grab some supplies from here first,” Arkay suggested. “Since we’re at a super market and all that.”
“Good idea!” Kalis beamed as he picked up a nearby shopping trolley. “If we’re walking, we’re gonna need lots of snacks!”