“I swear, you Thantir are fucking cursed!”
The fact that Tah, a normally rather calm being who very rarely said anything worse than ‘darn’, had just loudly cursed and thrown something across the room, was a sign that things were certainly not well. His recently repaired left arm was missing again, and one of his large, blue, crystalline eyes had completely shattered, leaving Tah partially blind. However, he was currently the least damaged member of his team of six, and was glad that his original body had been undamaged and put in storage, because Pah was using it to weld his siblings back together. In the mean time, he had called a meeting between himself, Retvik and Litvir, who were barely doing much better than Kal was.
“I cannot help but agree…” Litvir was only half paying attention, sipping water from a small cup. He had lost a lot of blood and everyone had insisted that he drink plenty of water to make up for it all, but Litvir wasn’t thirsty. Despite having been stabbed in the chest, it turned out Litvir had a genetic defect (one of many that had plagued Litvir over the years) that meant his heart was 10cm closer to the centre of his chest, compared to other Rethavok, and the damage Seimeni had caused wasn’t nearly as serious as it seemed. “I do not know what it was like before we became Decaylings here, but from the way you are acting, Tah, this seems… almost typical.”
Tah clicked several times, paused, then clicked some more. “I… I was about to blame this on you two, but, really, it’s our fault. We’re supposed to be the seasoned Decay Lords here, we should have realized sooner that something was wrong with Galyn, we should-”
“You are wrong!” Retvik snapped, making both Litvir and Tah jump. “None of us here are at fault! A Life Goddess, Kinisis of all beings, one of the most powerful entities in this sector and someone we all believed to be dead, drove Galyn into attacking us, then possessed Seimeni and fled!”
“You really think it was Kinisis?” Tah asked.
“Who else could it have been? What we saw, that could not have been because of Ahkron. Galyn was speaking the same twisted words our poor, battered Decaylings were all speaking when they all passed out!” Retvik fell silent, then sighed. “I… I admit, I do not know what to do now. We cannot chase after Seimeni, possessed or otherwise, she is a Life Goddess being controlled by another Life Goddess. I do not want to put us in danger again.”
Litvir nodded. “We are too inexperienced and, frankly, too beaten to do much of anything. I sent a warning message to Arkay, suggesting that he keep a look out, but there is not much else we can do but hope that Seimeni does not come back to hunt us down.”
Tah clicked again. His eyes dimmed briefly before lighting up. “Well, good news, seems like Pah has made some good progress on putting my brothers back together, and it seems Phovos is alive and well. While you and your Decaylings are… the unluckiest little guys around, you are very lucky to have a competent Time Drake like Elksia on board. She’s patched you all up no problem.”
Retvik grunted. “Kairos taught her well. Litvir and I have been pretty useless in furthering her studies.”
“To be fair, you two aren’t Time Drakes. You have to be a Time Drake to teach a Time Drake…” Tah trailed off. “Honestly, from what we’ve experienced so far, you could probably put all eight of your Decaylings into a Decay Lord Trial right now and they’d be absolutely fine. Even Tahvra, and his combat expertise is basically non-existent…” Tah hesitated again. “Still, we do have a problem. Galyn is completely broken, we’re bad at leadership stuff and anything Decay Lord-related outside of our job, and you two are way too inexperienced to be leading an entire sect full-time. Unless you can get Itaviir and Vikalos to come back, which you can’t, the Thantir are… basically dead.”
“Hmph, do not remind me…” Retvik sighed. “I am going to have to message Vikalos and tell him Litvir cut off his arm.”
“It was self-defence!” Litvir argued. “I thought he was attempting to bite Seimeni’s head off, not that he was in the middle of some sort of possessed transference sequence of passing Kinisis’s consciousness from one body to another! Vikalos should be thankful I did not cut Galyn’s head off!”
“I’m actually surprised you didn’t!” Tah chirped. “I would have. Surprised Koh didn’t tell you to either.”
“That would have killed Galyn, Tah…” Litvir frowned. “I did not want to kill anyone.”
Tah’s eyes flickered. “Oh yeah. I forget that happens to squishier beings. Even big, armoured, beings like you two and Galyn. That being said, I probably would have still told you to cut his head off for what he did to you. Either way, uh, next time one of us asks you to use our Krana-brains, don’t listen.”
Litvir blinked, surprised not just by Tah’s suggestion, but by the initial, oddly violent comment. None of Kal had ever seemed that aggressive before. “Why not?”
“You’re a powerful telepath and Koh was severely weakened, so he didn’t instantly possess you and take control of your body and wipe your recent memories. I mean, that’s what our brains do to Imperators, Leh once took over an entire village by possessing a Lewahian Imperator, and it definitely could have happened to you.” Tah realised he had gotten sidetracked again. Mostly because he could hear his siblings chittering and complaining in the back of his mind. “Anyway, I’m going to make a suggestion and I don’t think you two are going to like it.”
Both Retvik and Litvir crossed their arms and stared down at Tah.
“What do you suggest?”
“Well… I was thinking, we get out of this accursed sector entirely. Head out into Phantai territory. The Justar are a bunch of meanies and we have always hated working with them, but the Phantai are alright. We’ve worked for them before, they are just slow and bureaucratic. But at the very least, there’s lots of them and you’d be relatively safe within their territories.”
Litvir let out an awkward laugh. “Bureaucratic? Hah! We can handle that. The amount of mess Retvik, Arkay and I had to go through to become Decay Lords proper is just one such example out here. The bureaucracy of our kind back when we were mortals was just as bad.”
“Yet somehow you managed to find a way to work around that and-”
Litvir waggled a finger at Retvik, and Retvik quickly dropped the subject, instead going back to Tah’s suggestion. “You believe these Phantai will help us?”
“Uh, probably? They might be… a little annoyed at us though…”
“Us or you?” Litvir asked.
Tah clicked uneasily. “Oh, uh, just Galyn. Galyn and Itaviir used to be Phantai Decay Lords until they met Vikalos, I think. They split off and formed the Thantir. As for us, we’ve done plenty of work for them but mostly just for normal Decay Lords, they kinda don’t do much Decayling stuff.”
“What do they do?” Retvik enquired, with a hint of curiosity.
“Voidborn eradication, mostly.”
Litvir glanced at Retvik, who seemed to just shrug. “We have experience in that.”
“Arkay had experience in that!” Litvir corrected his fellow Decay Lord. “Arkay was the one who killed most of the Voidborns we came across!”
“Most, not all. You convinced Theocydes to turn on his own kind, and we were both present when Phovos took on that mind-altering Voidborn and ripped its throat out. And if we are not suited for that job, then we can just continue working with Kal. I am certain a large Decay Lord sect would appreciate some permanent purifiers on-site if they are constantly dealing with Voidborn threats.”
“I suppose…” Litvir hesitated, then sighed. But before he could get his words together, someone knocked on the door behind them.
“I apologise for interrupting!” Elkay exclaimed, panting slightly as he had clearly just run down the main hallway. “But Galyn is conscious and speaking again and he wishes to talk to Retvik and Litvir.”
The two young Decay Lords glanced at Tah, who clicked several times. “Go on, then.”
Litvir sighed and Retvik grunted as they followed Elkay down the main corridor, to what remained of the cargo bay, where Galyn was secured to the floor with large, metal strips. Before Pah had gotten to work fixing up the rest of Kal, he had welded Galyn to the ground. Elksia had dutifully reattached Galyn’s arm, but his tail was still twitching awkwardly to one side.
“You… wished to speak to us?” Retvik muttered as he cautiously approached. Elksia had backed away, standing guard alongside Elkay.
Galyn nodded. He let out a rather garbled whimper, before actually talking. However, his voice was hoarse and broken.
“I know my apologies mean nothing, but I am sorry. I failed you all. Kinisis has left my mind hollow, and I humbly wish for you to put me out of my misery, for the crimes I have committed against my own kin.”
“No…” was Retvik’s rather blunt reply. “Killing you would be too easy. You cannot face justice if you are dead…” Retvik straightened himself out, nodding over to Litvir, who drifted over. They had a quick, silent, telepathic conversation, before turning back to Galyn.
“We will not kill you, Galyn!” Litvir somewhat hissed as he circled the elder Decay Lord. “As Retvik said, death is not a suitable punishment. Too quick and painless. While it would be somewhat unfair to blame you for Kinisis’s possession of your mind, you have genuinely failed us as a mentor and a guardian.”
“Indeed. We were going to just package you up and send you away, do to you what you did to our poor Arkay, but, just like death, that would be too easy. After all, Arkay was not sound of mind and only vaguely threatened us, rather than outright attacking us. Instead, we are going to leave this sector and meet with the Phantai, who will, once we have given them a list of everything you have done to your own Decay Lords and Decaylings, will decide what to do with you.”
“You do realise that, in going back to the Phantai, you may end the Thantir?” Galyn growled.
Retvik nodded. “Yes, that is a possibility. But with you at the helm, you have doomed us yourself.”
Galyn closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He could do nothing but accept what his last two Decay Lords were saying.
“Very well…” Galyn eventually sighed. “Retvik, Litvir, I formally hand over leadership of the Thantir to you both. I am sorry.”
Litvir tutted, then snapped his fingers. Galyn instantly drifted off into a deep yet haunted sleep.
“I want to get out of here, now. Before something else awful happens.”
Retvik grunted, then took Litvir by the hand, leading him back down the main hallway.
“Do not worry, dear. We will get some coordinates from Kal and set off straight away. Things will turn around, I promise.”