Elkay sighed to himself as he sat on the very top of the Shimmering Blade and gazed off into the distance. Normally, the colossal Phantai vessel would be swiftly travelling through the perpetual darkness, patrolling its territories alongside a fleet of smaller ships, but a vast vacuum storm had brought the ship to a complete halt and forced it to anchor to a small planetoid. While there hadn’t been too much damage to the ship apart from some electrical faults, half the team that ran ship maintenance, alongside every being on board with vague telepathic powers, suddenly had massive migraines and were unable to work.
When it came to powers, Elkay mostly tended to borrow from others. Not always out of choice. He was designated as an ‘amalgam mimic’. He wasn’t a standard Decayon like everyone else, but he also wasn’t one of the Three Main Types, the three ‘species’ of entity that ruled over the Periuniversal Void. Elkay just… sometimes mimicked being a Life Goddess, a Voidborn or a Time Drake. Unfortunately though, Elkay’s telepathic powers were not borrowed from anyone, he’d hatched with telepathy, so he had a migraine as well. Not as bad as his beloved partner, who had given up and decided to just go to bed and try and sleep the pain away, but it was still annoying.
At least it was quiet out here. Elkay had been some sort of semi-divine being for about four years now, and sometimes he still found it weird how he didn’t really need to breathe any more. He still did, out of habit, but it boggled the mind sometimes.
Speaking of boggled minds, Elkay felt something behind him before he heard it. To his surprise, someone was standing behind him.
“Hello, brother.”
Elkay grunted. He didn’t really like it whenever Retvik called him that. Sure, Retvik was trying to be friendly and comforting. But to Elkay, it also felt somewhat condescending. Firstly, they were half-brothers. Due to the intersex nature of their species, Elkay’s father was Retvik’s mother, and this fact had confused, well, pretty much everyone. And they’d only really found out that they were siblings about ten years ago. It was… awkward.
“What do you want, Retvik?”
“Teekay said you seemed upset.”
“You spoke to Teekay?”
Retvik approached slowly. “Ran into him while fetching some stronger painkillers for Litvir. Had to take some myself, I had no idea that my vague, dead connection to the old Secret was enough to trigger headaches. May I sit with you?”
Elkay glanced up at his shimmering, utterly perfect half-brother, then grunted again. “Fine.”
“I can go if-”
“I do not know how you even got up here.”
Retvik shrugged as he sat down. “Phovos has picked up a lot of new Life Goddess powers all of a sudden. She seems to enjoy making magical portals everywhere. Is something wrong? Apart from the migraine, of course.”
“Ugh…” Elkay nearly growled. “I just… I will be blunt, I am very, very angry at existence right now. I try to do my best by everyone and the void just chews me up and spits me out, repeatedly. I have been spending a lot of time wondering what I did to deserve all of this.”
“You did not do anything. You do not deserve your suffering. Unfortunately, existence is, to put it nicely, a bastard.”
“You can say that again…” Elkay sighed, then glanced up at Retvik. Retvik was quite a bit taller than Elkay was. He was also, well, perfect in every way. Probably more perfect than their long lost brother Rethais, who was supposed to have been literally the perfect Rethan, even if Elkay always thought he was a colossal bastard.
“I am sorry, Elkay.”
“Oh fuck off.”
Retvik blinked. He glanced down at Elkay. “Uh…”
“Seriously, I know you mean well, Retvik, but fuck off. You should not be apologising to me, you have nothing to be sorry for!”
“Are you alright, Elkay?”
“No. I am fucking pissed off! I am sick and tired of being a freak that everyone holds at arm’s length because they do not know how to deal with me, I am sick of people thinking I am some sort of monster just because I am different and I hate how my being different is affecting everyone else!”
“I… I see… Is there something bothering you in particular, right now?”
Elkay turned away and put his head in his hands briefly, rubbing his eyes, before turning back to Retvik and snarling some more. “I want to do one damn thing: I want to marry Teekay, because I love him and I owe my life to him. It has been nearly five years now and I am still no closer to being able to do so! It turns out that Decay Lords do not get married, they form Duos, similar to Decay Lord Trios but less… pompous and fucked up, and a duo proposal has to go through Deathven! There is no way that those assholes of the highest order are going to allow me… ANYTHING! They were going to lock me away forever, Retvik, just because I am a bit weird, and if it wasn’t for your demented psychopath Kaldieridos girlfriend who is way more evil and powerful than I am, I would still be stuck there!”
Retvik didn’t have an answer. He weakly shrugged. “I understand why you are upset. I wish I could say something to make you feel better, but I cannot.”
“I… I should not have snapped… And I am really, really sorry about insulting Litvir. That was wrong. He may have done some awful things in the distant past, but he has done nothing but good by me…” Elkay trailed off. “Times like these, I wonder if things were this awful for Arkay. And I realize that I am somewhat like him whenever I suddenly snap like this.”
“Uh…” Retvik stuttered, not sure whether to be honest or not. “I will be honest, you… you can be a bit… Arkay-y at times. But, well, I cannot blame you. Even if we ignore the mimic-y stuff, you are both tragic individuals who have dedicated yourselves to protecting others, even at the detriment of yourselves. You are also kind, hard-working, adorable even though you deny it and you do have a good sense of humour when you allow yourself to relax, but you are also prone to bubbling up your anger and suddenly snapping.”
Elkay frowned. “Like I just did.”
“Yes, but, frankly, you have had a horrible time lately. But, well, you are a Decay Lord now!” Retvik smiled. “Even if Deathven decides to be… even more horrible to you, we will work something out. Worst case scenario, we will just create some sort of new Thantir tradition for you to get married under.”
“You would do that?”
“Of course!” Retvik hesitated briefly, then leaned down closer to Elkay. “Alright, I am going to tell you a secret, and you are not to tell anyone.”
“Is that wise, when we speak to Litvir and Eksi on the regular?”
“They respect us enough to not peer into our minds.”
“Fair.”
Retvik lowered his voice, to the point that he was barely whispering. “Once you and Teekay are married, I am… I am thinking of making things a bit more… permanent with Litvir. I would like to do the same with Arkay as well, but-”
Something beeped several times. It was Retvik’s communicator. Elkay recognized the series of tones, it was ta custom ring tone for one of Retvik’s contacts. Retvik immediately stopped what he was doing and answered the call.
“Arkay?”
“Hi Retvik, is everything alright? I called Litvir and he didn’t answer and I was scared you guys didn’t find him even though Kuta emailed me and told me Litvir had been found and… I have no idea what happened.”
Retvik sighed and put his communicator on loudspeaker so Elkay could hear.
“Litvir is fine, he is currently asleep. We are stuck in a vacuum storm and all our resident telepaths have massive migraines. We did find Litvir, this Hidden Named Trio called the Travellers picked him up and brought him back to us. Our Decaylings have just done their Trials and are now Decay Lords, right, Elkay?”
Elkay muttered a small hello. “I understand now why you were always so angry, Arkay.”
There was a loud hiss down the line. “Alright, firstly, congratulations, Elkay. Secondly, what the fuck did they try and do to you?”
“How do you-”
“You’re a stupid mixed up mimic thing like me. I bet my dead, surgically removed ovaries they did something stupid to hurt you.”
“The Overlord tried to seal me away in a glass canister, saying it was for my own good, because I am an Amalgam Hybrid. A name I have really come to hate. At some point, I would like to discuss a better name for ourselves, Arkay, if that is alright.”
“Yeah, that’s fine. I’m too angry for real civil discussion right now.”
“What is going on, Arkay? You said you had to go cold because you feared you could turn into Arkidetelos!” Retvik regained control of the conversation. “And suddenly you are back again?”
“Alright, so, Epani is an utter cunt. She gave me fake future flashes suggesting I’d lose Kuta and go feral with rage, but apparently Arkidetelos was a fucking tamper-protection thing made by Kinisis to stop other Life Goddesses from fucking with me, and Epani and Sini FUCKING REMOVED Arkidetelos when they remade me to be their death god!”
Retvik glanced at Elkay. Elkay though breathed a small sigh of relief. “I suppose that is good, in a way? At least now I know I cannot turn into a horrible rage monster like you did… no offence, Arkay.”
“None taken, Elkay. Thing is, Epani just… fucked with me and forced me to go cold, and when Kuta emailed me about what happened with Litvir, I decided I would discreetly… not go completely cold. Epani found out, attacked me, blatantly admitted that I was just a slave to her, so I got pissed off, Kairos leaped to Epani’s defence because he’s a retard and now I’m stuck in one of Sini’s nicer labs while Sini and I try to work out how to stop Epani from being so Kinisis-y.”
“Can you just murder Epani?” Elkay asked.
“Hah! I fucking want to, but that could cause the universe to collapse or something, so no…” Arkay trailed off. Retvik and Elkay could hear something on the other end of the line. “Fuck, I have to go. I’m sorry about everything. But also, Elkay, congratulations again for completing your trial, and say congrats to the other new Decay Lords for me. I’ll try and call back when I can.”
“Stay safe, Arkay…” Retvik sighed.
“Yeah, I’ll try. Love you, Retvik, say hi to Litvir for me. Look after yourself, Elkay, technically you’re my new little brother now…”
The call closed itself, and Retvik found himself sighing again. Elkay though seemed perturbed.
“I… I even sound a bit like him…” Elkay finally muttered.
“Actually, I would say that Arkay sounds more like you…” Retvik grunted. “He used to sound more… high-pitched, Skyavok-y and more echo-y back when we were Decaylings. But do not worry too much about what Arkay said. He is… not very good at talking about relationships and family and stuff…” Retvik patted Elkay on the shoulder. “Either way, while I am still perpetually concerned about one of my partners-”
“You genuinely consider Arkay to be your partner? On the same way you consider Litvir to be your partner?”
Retvik nodded. “I do. It is a complicated relationship and a strained one, but, well, despite the distance between us right now, Arkay and I have always had… something going on between us. Ever since he stopped me from bleeding out, outside a burning Kronospast laboratory… Bloody Light, that was a long, long time ago… As I was saying though, I think things may actually be turning around for us. You are all Decay Lords, you will all be getting a real income soon, we can start building our base and we will work something out for you and Teekay. The worst is behind us, for now.”
Elkay sighed, then looked up at Retvik and smiled a little. “You have a point… Thank you for your optimism, Retvik. I needed it. I also need some more painkillers.”
Retvik grunted. “Hmph, me too. I think pretty much everyone apart from Tenuk, Elksia, Phovos and Akah has a headache right now… Uh… I do not know how to get off the top of this ship.”
“Hah!” Elkay smiled some more as he reached up and put a hand on Retvik’s shoulder. “I can teleport us out of here. Worked out how to properly borrow Teekay’s electric teleportation powers a few hours ago.”
“Huh, neat. You really are a clever one.”
“I guess, but I still have a lot to learn… And some emotions to get better control of…”
Retvik patted Elkay on the head. “You are fiiiine, little brother. We all love you, no matter what.”
“I… I appreciate that… big brother…” Elkay smiled some more. “I genuinely do…”