Phovos straightened herself out as she climbed the stairs up to the top level of the Shimmering Blade. She was wearing her nicest dress, a black one with a light floral pattern on it. Phovos didn’t normally wear dresses, she was known to be the deadliest Ksithan alive back when she was mortal, but today, Phovos wanted to give herself the look of a Life Goddess. That was what Phovos was, however, she’d been studying with the Thantir to become a Decay Lord. As far as Phovos was concerned, she didn’t want to be associated with the Life Goddesses in general, but the Phantai, the Decay Lord sect she was currently working with, seemed to revere them.
With Phovos was Galyn, who had been acting as Phovos’s body guard. Galyn had been a former member of the Phantai, but he’d grown out of the Phantai’s Life Goddess worship. Some Phantai were a little too… preachy and touchy, and Galyn was unfriendly enough to dissuade anyone from getting too close.
As they reached the top, they were immediately stopped by Shadowblade, one of the three underlings of Voidblade, the Phantai leader.
“Neither of you are allowed up here.”
Galyn was about to speak, but Phovos patted him on the side, telling him to keep quiet and let her talk.
“Normally, I wouldn’t even want to be up here, but we all know Voidblade has been ill for a while and none of you really know how to help.”
Shadowblade held his long, black sword out, but lowered it slightly. “Voidblade’s health is none of your concern, Thantir.”
“His health is everyone’s concern!” Phovos smiled. “You higher ups have been keeping everything calm, saying that Voidblade is fine and all that, no one’s actually seen him since the whole thing with Krohniak. You know, the Voidborn I dealt with.”
The pure black Decay Lord sighed, lowering his blade further. “Yes, Voidblade has not been well, despite our treatments. But what does this have to do with anything, and why are you here?”
“Well, you’ve tried all sorts of things, but you haven’t tried me yet.”
Shadowblade blinked in confusion. To make matters worse, Nightblade, his fellow Decay Lord and Voidblade underling, approached to ask what was going on. Phovos decided to cut with the cute stuff and be blunt.
“Simply put, I’m a Life Goddess. I’m a stupidly young one and I’m not very powerful, but I do have useful traits. I saved Galyn here from what would have otherwise been a fatal stab wound, I saved Elksia from bleeding out when she had her wings ripped off and I just seem to have magic healing powers. And I want to put these healing powers to good use. I want to help you.”
The two underlings glanced at each other. They started speaking, but were speaking so quietly that Galyn and Phovos couldn’t hear them. After a few moments, Shadowblade relented and dismissed his weapon.
“Alright. I guess we can let you try. Leafblade has to stay here though with us.”
“Fair enough. Galyn, if these guys fuck you around, let me know and I’ll send them to the same place I sent Krohniak.”
Galyn grunted. “Thank you, Phovos.”
Phovos smiled. Nightblade led Phovos to one of the doors on the end, then knocked five times. The door opened up, revealing Voidblade. Every other time Phovos had seen Voidblade, he had been a massive, hulking suit of black, gold and silver armour, with a particularly sharp and varied crown of horns and armour on top of armour. But today, Voidblade seemed… well, he was still heavily armoured, he was a Beh’evok and they were naturally armoured beings, but Phovos found it weird that she could see Voidblade’s eyes. His weird, white eyes, with no obvious iris or anything.
“Hi, I want to help.”
Voidblade looked Phovos up and down.
“You want to help?”
“Yes. I’m a Life Goddess. I can do… things.”
Voidblade glanced at Nightblade and dismissed him, before opening the door wider and leading Phovos inside.
Voidblade’s room was larger than it seemed. It was a full apartment, but everything was painted black, with gold highlights. Most of the room consisted of a pile of pillows, cushions and blankets, with a large TV mounted to the wall. There were three doorways, one leading to a bathroom, the other to a kitchen and a third being some sort of storage room. By the bed was an array of medical equipment, mostly some sort of heart monitor. Phovos spotted a band around Voidblade’s wrist, which seemed to be monitoring his vitals.
Voidblade wobbled across the room, before awkwardly climbing into the bed of pillows and loudly sighing.
“I apologise, little one. I have essentially no energy any more. I would go through my normal spiel about how I am honoured to be in the presence of a Life Goddess, but, well, I think you would get angry if I said that. Please, make yourself at home and tell me why you have blessed me with your presence.”
Phovos glanced around the apartment, not really sure what to do. “Do you mind if I get us a drink?”
Voidblade nodded. “Of course. Whatever you need, blessed one.”
Stepping into the kitchen, Phovos picked a random cupboard looking for glasses, and found them on the first try. She then opened up the fridge, saw a bottle of what looked like mountain spring water and poured two glasses of that, before returning to the main room.
“May I ask why you have blessed me with your presence, Lifetaker?”
“You can call me Phovos.” Phovos handed a glass of water to Voidblade. “Lifetaker is a dumb name, even if I am very, very good at killing things.”
“Very well. You may call me Telin then. Phovos is an unusual name for a Life Goddess.”
Phovos shrugged. “I kinda only recently found out I was a Life Goddess. I thought I was a Divine Guardian like my other fellow Decaylings. Well, apart from Eksi and Elksia. Elksia was always a Time Drake, I have no idea what Eksi is but I think technically he’s just a Decayon. Either way, I may hate being a Life Goddess, but I heard that you were ill and thought I’d offer my help.”
Telin grunted. “That is very generous of you. But why do you hate being a Life Goddess?”
“Every single Life Goddess I have ever met, including the one I used to serve, has been a horrible, horrible being. I don’t want to be like that, and I fear, if I start training myself properly, I’ll become a horrible being myself.”
“But here you are, offering to help me.”
Phovos tutted, sipping her glass of water. “Because I’m a good person. I don’t think Kinisis would give two fucks about you or any of the Phantai in general. Now, tell me, what’s actually wrong with you?”
Voidblade fell silent, quietly drinking his drink. It took him far too long to answer.
“Aside from the complete memory loss, my body has refused to heal correctly. I would blame Spiritpurger, but I do not think they are aware of what they did either, and they were trying to save my life, so I cannot be angry at the little team of purifiers. Still, I find it odd that they were willing to join a sect after all these year-strings. Either way, my internal organs, which I did not believe I needed but apparently do, keep on reforming in the wrong places, meaning that my medics have to constantly remove the organs and have me regrow them. This is very, very draining for me.”
Phovos thought to herself. “Huh. May I see?”
There was a lot of hesitation in the air. Telin looked Phovos up and down, very clearly judging her, trying to decide whether she was a threat or not. But he soon changed his mind when he realized he was judging a Life Goddess, something he considered holy. Telin remained lying down, but slowly removed the plating that covered his chest, revealing a large hole, filled with a lot of black blood, which had been dripping out from underneath the armour plating. Weirdly though, there only seemed to be one organ present, Telin’s heart.
“It is not the nicest sight.”
“No, clearly…” Phovos muttered. “This is going to sound silly, considering your code name is Voidblade, but do you have a knife or something I can borrow?”
Telin summoned a black, floating dagger, which he delicately put in Phovos’s hand. Phovos took the dagger, then clambered into Telin’s bed, so she was standing above the large hole in Telin’s chest. With a sigh, she slit her left wrist with the blade, and let her blood drop into the wound. There was a weird hissing sound, but immediately, things started moving around and growing, starting with Telin’s lungs. After Phovos had let enough blood fall, she licked her wrist, sealing the cut, then sat down next to Telin.
“Might take a while. My blood isn’t that fast. We should talk in the mean time. As a distraction.”
Telin glanced downwards, then wished he hadn’t. Instead, he turned to Phovos. “What do you want to talk about?”
“To be honest? I want to know why you haven’t won this stupid war yet. Every single patrol I’ve been on, you guys have won handily. Even without our help. But you’re still fighting.”
Telin closed his eyes, tutting loudly. “I ask myself that question on the regular. The problem is, we cannot locate the Voidborn’s mothership, where they respawn their soldiers and their ships. We did get close to discovering its location, but…” Telin trailed off. “Well, there is a reason this is the Shimmering Blade version 72. They have SOMETHING that automatically detects nearby ships that get too close to their mothership and just… annihilates them.”
“Any ship?”
Telin nodded. “Any ship. Except, I assume, Voidborn ones. We experimented with a handful of different ships, but they were all blown up. We have also not tried using Life Goddess ships, because those are impossible to get a hold of. But anything Decayon-built just gets destroyed. And no one can seem to pilot Voidborn ships, they just self-destruct when a Decay Lord takes control of the ship, so we just default to destroying them.”
“Do you know where the mothership is?” Phovos asked.
Telin thought to himself. “No. Not exactly. We have a very rough estimate, based on ships that have blown up nearby. But no exact location, despite our best efforts. While I do want our war to end, while I do want the Crystal Doom destroyed, all we can currently do is keep their numbers low and keep them as weak as we can.”
“Huh. That sucks…” Phovos trailed off, not really sure what else to say. After a few moments, she peered at Telin’s chest. Everything seemed to be regrowing nicely, so she licked her fingers, then ran her saliva across the edges of the wound. Slowly, Telin’s organic plating started to regrow.
Already feeling better, Telin found the energy to sit up somewhat. He turned to Phovos, utterly amazed.
“You have blessed me.”
“Yeah, no, I haven’t. I’m just using what little stupid Life Goddess powers I have to make people’s lives better. It’s why I don’t consider myself a true Life Goddess. The only other Life Goddess I knew who at least tried to be decent was Seimeni, but she… she was fucking with everyone emotionally, in ways that were undetectable to everyone apart from me. Life Goddesses are monsters. They made the Phantai just to clear up their mess, right? Because they made the Crystal Doom and the Golden Protectors, didn’t they, before the Voidborns turned on you all.”
Telin sighed, then nodded. “You are correct. And us Phantai have been doomed to try and eradicate them ever since…” Telin sighed some more. “Phovos, dear, you have done me a great service. How can I repay you?”
“Uh… do you mind if I think about it?” Phovos asked as she got up. “Like… apart from you apologising to Tah for ripping his head off, I… I don’t know how you can repay me.”
Telin also stood up. For once, he didn’t feel woozy. He swiftly bowed, expressing his gratitude.
“Of course. You are always welcome up here, Phovos. Since you are a Life Goddess, you are welcome anywhere around here. Thank you for your kindness and your blessing.”
Phovos awkwardly bowed back, then made her way to the door. “Yeah, no worries. Just doing what I can to help. I’ll leave you to it, but I recommend you stay lying down for a bit.”
Telin did as he was told and returned to his bed. “Thank you.”
“No problem. Rest well, Telin.”
Phovos closed the door behind her, then shuddered. Thankfully, Galyn was still there, waiting for her. Phovos immediately headed towards him, then led him back down the stairs.
“How did it go?”
“It went well, I guess…” Phovos tutted. “Your former boss gives me the creeps though.”
Galyn lacked a proper response. “I suppose. Voidblade has always been a bit… odd.”
“Yeah, definitely. Part of me thinks there’s a little Voidborn in him, but there’s no way of me knowing…”
Galyn froze in his tracks. “What do you mean?”
Phovos shrugged as she kept on walking. “Eh, it’s probably nothing. Do you mind if we go and get something to eat? I need to clear my head.”
Galyn blinked several times, then chased after Phovos. “Of course, dear, whatever you need…”