Epani’s screams of agony would have echoed across the cosmos, but the torture chamber Arkay had built didn’t allow for that. Really, Arkay was surprised at how quickly Epani had buckled to the pain, howling and wailing as… well, Arkay hadn’t even really done that much yet. It was mostly just the pressing of hot iron to Epani’s skin and the odd electric shock. He hadn’t even started breaking any fingers or anything. He was saving the finger snapping until later, mostly because that had been a favourite torture technique that had been used on Arkay himself, in distant, far more horrible times. All the while, Arkay hadn’t drawn a single drop of blood. He didn’t need to.
“Y-y-you monster…” Epani stuttered as tears streamed from her eyes. She watched as Arkay heated up a poker inside a miniature sun he had created with power stolen from Epani herself. Or did Arkay somehow also know how to make stars? Epani didn’t know.
“Everyone’s been calling me a monster ever since I was, well, born, I guess…” Arkay tutted. “I mean, I am the God of Death, the Avatar of Decay, the Lord of Suffering…”
“That is a new title…”
Arkay smiled briefly. He took the poker and pressed it against Epani’s neck, leaving a burn mark which swiftly healed. “It is, but I like it! After all, it does very much encapsulate what I am. Not just a being that causes suffering, but a being who has genuinely suffered as well. Right now though? This suffering I am putting you through? You could have avoided it.”
“H-how so?”
“You could have not made me suffer.”
“E-explain…”
Arkay hesitated briefly. He stared at Epani, trying to work out why she clearly didn’t get what was going on. After summoning a bucket of ice water and pouring it over her head, causing the Panelix to shriek, Arkay decided to, well, explain.
“Simply put, you didn’t have to put fake future flashes in my head and make me go cold. You were clearly unhappy with me being in a relationship with a mortal. Rather than discuss this with me, you did a lot of blatantly cruel things, like causing earthquakes on the Rethan and Lanex capitals, cutting me off from my semi-mortal friends, making me drop the nice political things I was doing with my chosen races and forcing me to end my relationship with Kuta.”
“You… you would not have understood had I not been forceful…” Epani shivered as more ice water fell on her. “You do not-”
“I would have understood! Epani, you’ve known me for billions of years, I have ALWAYS been a reasonable being, willing to talk and make compromises. If you were concerned that, I dunno, Kuta or I could have been blackmailed, then you should have been upfront about it, and we would have worked something out! But no, you just made me suffer instead!”
“Yet you keep on fighting.”
“Of course I do…” Arkay hesitated, then closed his eyes. “Epani, sister, do you know how I was originally deified?”
Epani shook her head. She didn’t say anything. Arkay talking meant that Arkay was briefly not hurting her.
“She… I…” Arkay swallowed nervously. “You know I was originally a mortal, right? Well, Kinisis… She killed me before my time. And then she imprisoned my… my soul, I guess, because those were a thing back then. She tortured me. For hours and hours and days and days. Not just the bloodless stuff I’m doing to you. Pretty much every kind of torture under the sun, from starvation to water boarding to forced feeding to sexual assault to blood letting to genital mutilation. She finished it off by pumping the insides of a star into my body and inserting her genetic makeup into me, so I’d be part of her. Why did she do that? I don’t know. As far as I’m aware, she didn’t do that with other Veth, it was just a thing she did to me, and I’d been an utterly loyal little mortal, doing as she had instructed me to on multiple occasions. But Kinisis did all of that to me, then wondered why I wasn’t subservient to her…”
Arkay trailed off. He glanced at Epani as both of them had come to the same realization. Epani had finally worked out why Arkay no longer wanted to be loyal to her, because she was blatantly repeating Kinisis’s actions.
Another ice bucket made Epani screech a little too loud, snapping her back to reality. Arkay started doing something else now. Waving his arms. Summoning something. A box.
“I’ll be blunt. I didn’t discuss this bit with Sini. I didn’t discuss it with Kairos either. But there’s one kind of torture that Kinisis never did to me. She liked having me around, watching me suffer. That meant that something like solitary confinement had no value to her. However, I think a bit of solitary confinement will do wonders for you. Some time to sit and think about what you’ve done. Won’t be forever. After all, you’re a Goddess, you have work to do. Occasionally. But the time I spent cold, you’re going to spend cold.”
The box wasn’t very big. Just about large enough for Epani to stand in, maybe enough room for her to sit. Arkay undid the chains holding Epani in place, then forced her inside the box, swiftly slamming the lid shut. He then bit his finger, drawing blood, and sealed the box with a special blood-bound lock, one unique to him and his mimic-self.
Across the universe, Epani’s influence faltered, then faded somewhat. Every part of the Panelix’s domain was now being run subconsciously. The Goddess of Space had now gone cold, the same way Arkay had.
Arkay sighed to himself, not really sure how to feel. Sure, the revenge had been nice, but Arkay wondered if it was too much. Or whether it was enough. Or if Epani would learn anything?
Before he could ponder those thoughts further though, Arkay noticed that time slowed down to almost nothing, very briefly. In that time, Kairos had completely demolished Arkay’s little torture asteroid field, and was now standing before Arkay. Kairos was definitely armed and a threat, but since Arkay didn’t want to provoke the Time Drake, he disarmed himself and stood, arms apart, showing that he meant no harm. Not to Kairos, at least.
To Arkay’s surprise though, Kairos didn’t try to initiate conversation. Instead, he summoned a vast, crystal sword and forced it through Arkay’s chest, melting through the metal armour he was wearing and cracking his organic plating.
“YOU BROKE YOUR PROMISE!” Kairos snarled as he twisted the blade deeper into Arkay’s chest.
“W-w-what?” Arkay could barely speak. Everything felt cold. Drops of black, toxic blood drifted off into the darkness, crystallizing into tiny pearls of death. Normally, Arkay could survive an injury like this, he’d survived injuries like this before. He tried to cling on, to keep himself conscious, but the unexpectedness of the attack and the weapon used, a weapon that was twisting time around Arkay and freezing him, was all a little too much.
“YOU SAID YOU WOULDN’T KILL EPANI! YOU LIED. SO I AM GOING TO END YOU!”
Kairos clearly didn’t wait for Arkay to try and argue. He tore open a portal and dragged Arkay through it, before throwing the battered Thantophor down onto a nearby abandon-world, not caring that Arkay was the size of a block of flats currently, and Kairos was three times his size. Kairos pushed the blade through Arkay further, pinning him to the planet’s surface, and robbing Arkay of his consciousness.
Before Kairos could finish Arkay off, Sini blatantly threw both herself and the box that contained Epani between the two male deities.
“YOU BROKE YOUR PROMISE!” Sini howled. “YOU KNOW LITTLE ARKY DOESN’T BREAK HIS PROMISES! BUT, AGAIN, YOU JUST ASSUMED, AND NOW LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE!”
Kairos immediately backed away. Harming the Thantophor was one thing, but Sini was too precious to hurt. Sini held the box up in front of Kairos.
“Epani isn’t fucking dead! She’s in here! She’s gone cold the same way Arkay did!”
“Well get her out of that box and prove me wrong then!” Kairos hissed.
Sini paused, then fiddled with the box. Try as she might, she couldn’t work out how to open it. After some more fiddling around, Sini realized the box was an ancient phthoric storage container, nigh unbreakable, designed to contain traces of corrupted matter. They were designed to not be opened until after a specific amount of time. As indicated by the blood seal Arkay had created.
“I… I can’t… And now, thanks to you, Arkay can’t break the seal either, since you stole his fucking consciousness! Not that he might not bother waking up now! You broke your promise to him, you swore you wouldn’t interfere but you did, and now Arkay has no desire nor need nor ability to uphold his own promise!”
Kairos didn’t say anything at first. Eventually, he crossed his arms and tutted. “Universe will be better with Arkay subconsciously doing his duties anyway. He may not have killed Epani, but he theoretically killed her. When that box unseals itself and Epani is free, then I’ll let Arkay wake up.”
“That is a gross misinterpretation of the promise Arkay made. I know. I remained in my lab while you both hovered above it. I heard what you discussed.”
“Epani is as good as dead right now.”
“She’s fucking fine. She’s just gone cold! I just… RAAAGH!” In a fit of rage, Sini whacked Kairos across the face with the box that contained Epani, not caring that she was hurting both of them. Kairos blinked, then glared at Sini, snarling back at her.
“How dare you.”
“How dare you!” Sini roared. “Fucking get out of here! Go back to your own fucking duties, stop being a fucking slave simp for Epani and stop fucking making everything worse!”
“Making things worse? Oh, no, Arkay will be better off, being essentially dead, since that’s what he always wanted. And Epani never did much actual work anyway. Maybe you and I can have some peace and quiet for once and work on our own projects. Once Epani is free, Arkay will go free, and we go back to the status quo.”
Kairos snarled some more. He waved a hand over both Arkay and the crystalline sword. The sword melted down, turning into heavy, icy shackles that bound Arkay to the planet’s surface. Not that the Thantophor was able of noticing. The Whenvern then snatched Epani’s prison from Sini’s hands and took off, disappearing into the void.
Sini fell silent, not really sure what to do. Eventually, she sat down next to her little, broken brother, and gently stroked his cheek. She let several silver tears dripped from her heavy eyes and land on the vast wound across Arkay’s chest. While the injury did slowly heal up, Arkay remained utterly cold and unmoving.
“I’m sorry, I really am…” Sini whispered, continuing to cry. “I… I couldn’t predict this… I should have stayed with you, stopped Kairos from interfering properly… I’ll… I’ll make sure that your sleep is pleasant. It’s the least I can do…”
With one last sob, Sini got up and started work planting a dense forest, to protect her fallen shadow.