The metal door slammed shut with such ferocity that the door frame was still shaking. Vibrations travelled down the corridor, making other doors shudder as well. Kairos couldn’t help but wonder what he had done wrong, but was also wondering just how much the room on the other side of the door was shaking.
“That could have gone better…” a small voice muttered somewhere behind Kairos. The Whenvern turned around, crossing his arms as he realised who the tiny voice belonged to. Arkadin, technically Kairos’s younger sibling, was just standing there, a plate of chips in one hand, two cans of drink in the other and several books tucked under his arm.
“You can talk…” Kairos grunted, vaguely annoyed by Arkadin’s presence. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to share lunch with you. Before you leave. Although maybe I should have made an appointment? Didn’t know you were scheduled for an hour long argument with Seimeni.”
Kairos sighed, leaning against the wall. The shuddering from the slammed door had finally settled. “I really didn’t think she’d be that upset with me. I mean, sure, I get that she’s upset that I’m leaving, but did she really have to call my sisters whores?”
“Well… she is right about Yisini… Still rather mean though…”
With another sigh, Kairos got up and made his way over to his own room, scraping his claw across a small groove to open it, essentially using his fingers as keys. To his surprise, Kairos noticed that Arkadin had followed him.
“I thought…” Kairos started, then grunted a little. “Fine. You can come in. Probably won’t be seeing much of you anyway once you become a Decay Lord.”
Arkadin smiled and made his way inside. “I didn’t know what you wanted so I brought you chips and a beer.”
“Well… thanks…” Kairos accepted the beer and threw himself into a fluffy hammock. Everything in Kairos’s room seemed much larger than they should be. Almost as if Kairos had built a small pocket dimension where his room should have been. The room itself was made of shimmering glass and crystal, with various hammocks scattered around, as well as a small desk. Everything else was either packed away in panels in the nearby wall, or packed away in a couple of suitcases. “So, uh, why are you here? Just to say goodbye?”
“I guess…” Arkadin shrugged, awkwardly climbing into one of the spare hammocks. “Honestly I’m just surprised you want to go back. I thought you liked the freedom out here.”
“Turns out I prefer being a big fish in a small pond more…” Kairos frowned. “I feel small and insignificant out here. Hard to be a big, powerful time drake when you spend your time dealing with creatures that make universes on the regular…”
“That’s only part of it though, isn’t it?” Arkadin asked. “You’re missing something.”
“I miss our sisters. I miss that feeling of creating and maintaining something beautiful. But the reality is, Kinisis kinda screwed everything up and I was fucking pissed at her. Now she’s genuinely out of the picture, I want to go back to the creating and maintaining and stuff. Because that is what I feel I was made to do, to be a god of time in a nice little universe. Kenon still being around is… not the best, but Epani has him on a tight leash now, and he was never… really the problem. Kinisis was the one who made the mess.”
Arkadin shrugged some more, sipping his drink. “I get that. For you, it must have been pretty good fun. You had people worshipping you, a pretty easy job and siblings that you liked. Now the problem’s out of the way, I can see why you’d want to go back.”
Kairos smiled, glad that Arkadin understood. “I assume you don’t want to come back?”
“Nah. I need my own freedom now.”
“Fair enough…” Kairos trailed off, taking a swig from his drink. It wasn’t the sort of beer he expected. Some sort of shandy mix, really. It went well with the chips he had nicked from Arkadin’s little plate “If Epani, Yisini and I asked, would you come back?”
Arkadin thought to himself for a moment. “Uh… Well, if you needed me, of course I’d come back. I’d always come back to help you. But… willingly? Back to my old duties? Probably not. I don’t need that… hatred and pain in my life any more.”
“We never really… treated you right…” Kairos muttered. “Kinisis was always pushing us away from you… And if she wasn’t, then Kenon was getting jealous and doing the same… Although, really, we all treated you like crap…”
“You did. But… well, I don’t care any more. I’m trying to do my own thing now. Once I’m a Decay Lord with my own ship and stuff, everything will be great.”
Kairos smiled, ever so slightly. “Yes, everything will be great. For both of us…” With a tut, Kairos jumped up. “Anyway, I need to finish sorting stuff out. Do you want to give me a hand?”
Arkadin shrugged. “Sure. I’ve got some spare time. What do you need doing?”
“Oh, nothing much, just packing. But I could do with the company… And some more of those chips. Forgot how much I love chips…”