Arkadin tutted as he entered the Grand Dining Hall of Time. Everything inside Kairos’s massive palace was named the same way, everything relating to time and dragons. Already present were Kairos and his sisters Epani and Yisini, each sitting at one side of a gold-plated table, golden plates in front of them filled with food.
“Hi, siblings, how are you all doing?” Arkadin put on a pretty face as he sat down. A silver goblet of water appeared in front of him, but he didn’t touch it.
“We are… alright…” Yisini hesitated. “We wanted to talk to you about… well…”
“We wanted to talk about you going away for a while!” Kairos spoke clearly. He was currently in his most dragon-y form, four heavy, clawed limbs and a massive pair of wings. “We want to suggest to you that you take a holiday and we see how things go.”
The Lord of Death rolled his eyes. “Really? You want to do this AGAIN?”
“Yeah…” Yisini shifted her chair closer to Kairos and Epani. “We… just want to…”
“You want to kick out one of the four pillars of this universe and see how things go?” Arkadin snapped, standing up from his chair. “Do you know how many times I have had to tell you retards that we can’t fucking do that?”
“Little brother, please…”
Arkadin slammed his fist on the table. He was pissed off. He’d been pissed off before he arrived, he’d just finished dealing with a collapsing planet and a weak spot in the universe’s external membrane, and now he was dealing with this. Again.
“Don’t you dare “little brother” me, Yisini. You three come to me every thousand years, saying the exact same damn thing. That you want me to fuck off because I’m Entropy and you don’t like that.”
Epani and Yisini glanced at each other. Kairos though shrugged.
“Basically, yeah. It’s your fault everything dies and decays, little brother. Maybe if you fuck off for a bit, things won’t die and decay.”
“It won’t though!” Arkadin shouted. “None of this WORKS LIKE THAT! You remove me, entropy and decay still fucking continue to exist! All I do is stabilize the system and stop any anomalies! The same damn way that time and space don’t stop if you guys go to sleep!”
“Yeah, but…” Kairos shook his head. “The thing is, we spoke to Mother Kinisis the other day. She said something weird, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. She said that you are too cute to be a god of death. You came out the exact opposite of how she wanted you to be…”
Epani nodded in agreement. “You are a good guy doing a bad guy’s job. This is not acceptable to Kinisis. She desires an enemy for mortals to rally against. And here you are, getting all cosy with the leaders of a union of miscreants.”
Arkadin rolled his eyes. “So? Kairos killed the son of the leader of the Kronospast empire and Yisini slept with the entire leadership of the Temthans! I know about that because I stopped some poor Temthan Raptoran from killing himself because he thought he’d never get anything better. Why do I have to be a bad guy? Why can’t we all just work together and find a way to…” Arkadin stopped in his tracks, then sighed, sitting back down.
“Why can’t we just what?” Kairos smiled. “Why can’t we work together and find a way to stop you from killing us all? Was that what you were going to say?”
The Lord of Death didn’t answer. Kairos turned to his other siblings, almost giggling that he’d outsmarted his little brother.
“Maybe you should take a break…” Yisini suggested. “You’ve never actually left your duties before…”
“Because I’m not allowed to…” Arkadin whispered. “I’m… I have all these rules I follow that you don’t have to. No mind-alterants. No holidays. No romance. As little worship and religion as possible. You all can do whatever you want while I only ever do my job. The only thing that has changed recently is Kinisis wanting us to do this little empire-building thing. If it wasn’t for that, I would just be doing my job all the time as always…”
Kairos smiled again, getting up from his seat and bringing his drink with him. He circled the table and gently put one of his massive, clawed hands on Arkadin’s shoulder. He quickly removed it though as he realised Arkadin was too small to do that to.
“You never got to be who you wanted to be!” Yisini exclaimed. “You just do the same things!”
“You are so scared of doing something different…” Epani added. “Unable to break any rules.”
“Kenon set you up like that, didn’t he?” Kairos tutted.
“Yeah.”
“He did that to all of us. You were always just too scared to grow out of it. I think it’s time we changed that.”
Yisini gave Kairos an odd look, but Epani smiled alongside her draconic brother, bringing her own drink over. Kairos grabbed the silver goblet and threw it over his shoulder, refilling it with a new, red liquid.
“Shall we start with a glass of wine, little brother?”
Kairos pushed the glass into Arkadin’s hand.
“Start what?” Arkadin was confused. They’d been berating him on being too good, and now they wanted him to drink with them?
“Start your new godhood, without any laws, without anyone controlling you…”
The Thantophor eyed the drink, then put it back down on the table.
“Thank you for the offer, Kairos, but I’m not in the mood to drink right now. I have… things to think about…”
In a flash of sparkles, Arkadin disappeared. Epani hissed then headbutted the table. Yisini simply laid back in her seat.
“Told you he wouldn’t go for it.”
“Doesn’t matter…” Kairos smirked. “We got him thinking. That’s good enough.”