“I didn’t think I’d be seeing you all again so soon…”
Timik stared at the little Skyavok in front of him. The Skyavok stared at a plate of toast and slices of smoked ham in front of Timik. He didn’t reply to Timik’s words though.
The two of them were sitting on a sofa in a messy but also somewhat plain living room belonging to a familiar face. The Raptor hadn’t been expecting guests, let alone four of them, so her house was in a bit of a bad state. Opposite them was a small coffee table and past that, another sofa, where a confused Kronospast was sitting, sipping a cup of overly sweet tea.
“I didn’t expect any of you either. Knew I should have tidied up this morning!” Phovos tutted, wiping crumbs off the table and into a tissue, which she then scrunched up and threw into a bin across the room. “But when a Death God asks if he can come round, who am I to say no? What happened to you all anyway?”
Kohra shrugged. “I’m fine. I just had a drunk dragon harassing me for twelve hours.”
Timik groaned in pain, while Kayen muttered something about being kidnapped multiple times.
“I know that healing ship pod thing healed me up, but I’m going to a hospital after all this is over…” Timik grunted. “I thought the Allbirther was supposed to make more life in a sexy way, not by cutting my stomach open…”
“I’m really sorry about that…”
The four mortals were interrupted by Arkadin, the Lord of Death. The last few times they’d seen him, he had appeared as a pretty normal-looking Skyavok. Today he looked a lot more menacing, with overly long claws and a mane of black smoke and stars that ran along his back and completely covered his tail. His armour was pointier than normal as well.
“Especially about Yisini. I was really tempted to genuinely hurt her, because she has left a trail of blood and bodies all across Temthan territories-”
“Wait!” Timik suddenly interrupted. “Why the fuck do you care? You’re, like, the god of death and bad things and shit and here you are, rescuing a bunch of retards and being not at all death-y! You should have let us all die! Like, Kohra mentioned you saved him from the Whenvern, you saved Kayen from the Panelix and you saved me from the Allbirther, but why the fuck are you doing that when you murder literally everything on a cosmic scale!”
Phovos and Kayen both gave Timik some very frightened looks. Kohra leaned back in his seat, not really wanting to be part of this meeting any more.
“Why do you care?”
Arkadin shrugged. “I’ll be honest, I don’t really know.”
Timik blinked. “You don’t know?”
“I don’t.”
“Isn’t it…” Phovos stuttered over her words. Timik had a point and she wanted to stand up for him. “Isn’t it kinda… hypocritical almost for you to, uh, save us? Because Timik is right, you could save a lot more people than just us.”
Again, Arkadin shrugged. “Yeah but most people aren’t threatened with death by gods that aren’t the Thantophor. They’re… not even supposed to kill. But they do. Difference is, I saved you all from being used by the other gods. Yisini wanted to turn Timik into a cloning baby factory. Epani wanted to turn Kayen into her own personal Reaper so she could worm her way into more Panvok species. Kairos, despite saying otherwise, still wants to use Kohra as a tool to blackmail the Kronospast empire into doing his bidding…” The Thantophor paused as he turned to Phovos. “And Kenon coming after you? That… That’s unheard of.”
Arkadin got up and wandered over to Phovos’s kitchen, grabbing a knife from a drawer. Phovos glanced at Kohra, quietly asking how the Thantophor knew where she kept everything. They watched as the Thantophor leaned on the counter, nonchalantly stabbing himself with the knife.
“We go through phases. We’re going through a bad phase right now. One that makes us all… kinda mortal. We act more like mortals than gods. Basically we’re all doing dumb shit right now. And really, you’re right, Timik, I shouldn’t have saved you all. But I did. Because there’s something about you four that makes you different.”
“Like the Dessaron?” Phovos asked.
“No, more than that. I picked those three by chance. You all have been… touched by something. Like Yisini put extra care into making you all. I don’t even know what was stuck inside Phovos’s DNA. You’re all…” Arkadin stopped mid-sentence. “You’re all linked. In more ways than one. Piss, Kairos played me, he got me to link you all together. Because he knows as well.”
“He knows what?” Timik growled. “You’re really not doing a good job of conveying answers and giving us confidence!”
Arkadin apologised. “I know, I’m sorry. It’s all so hard to explain. None of it makes sense, even to me. It’s so damn frustrating!”
“Is that why you’re stabbing yourself?” Kayen asked. “Because you’ve gotten blood all over that worktop.”
The Thantophor stopped what he was doing and stared at the mess he had made. His black, inky blood covered the counter. The wounds on his arm were already healing up, but he had clearly stabbed right through into the bone. And Arkadin hadn’t even noticed.
“There’s something wrong with me. I have to go.”
Before the four mortals could say anything, the Thantophor was gone.
“Well shit…” Timik growled. “Not only is the Death God crazy and rambling as fuck, but what the fuck are we going to do if the other gods come back for us?”
“I assume we’re going to find out soon enough…” Phovos sighed. “In the mean time, we need to stick together.”
“They’re fucking deities!” Kayen squealed. “How do we get away from them? Talk about stopping the unstoppable!”
Kohra shook his head. “I’m normally quite optimistic, but we seem kinda screwed currently…”
Phovos didn’t answer at first. Her eyes were focused not on the blood, but on the knife. “We’re not screwed.”
The others all stared at Phovos.
“What?”
“We’ll be fine.”
“Why?”
Phovos picked up the knife. It wasn’t her knife at all. “Because the Thantophor left us with a god-killing weapon…”