“You guys seem tired…” Arkadin grunted as he wandered into the Decayling lounge area, carrying several large books. Really, the books weren’t that large, but since Arkadin was small, they looked outlandish on his person. “Were you two… at it… again?”
“Yes, actually. You seem disappointed that we were. Do you not like it when Retvik and I spend time together?” Litvir was lounging around on a pile of blankets on the floor, while Retvik was lying on a recently flattened out sofa bed. They had plenty of other furniture available to them, not to mention their own personal quarters, but none of it really worth lying on.
Arkadin placed the books on a nearby coffee table, shrugging. “It’s really not a problem.”
“Yet you seem so disgruntled whenever we do these things…” Retvik frowned. “If you do not like it-”
“If he does not like us frollicking together, that is none of his business!” Litvir interrupted. “I want to spend personal time with you, you wish to do the same with me, I do not see why we should ignore our sexual desires to make Arkadin comfortable.”
“I was actually gonna say that I don’t really care…” Arkadin shrugged some more. “I mean, I find it awkward as fuck, but you’re both consenting adult beings and I don’t want to get in your way. Plus, I have seen worse. Way, way worse.”
“Like what?” Litvir’s tone changed to that of curiosity. “Oh, what am I saying? You are a god of death, I assume you have seen many terrible things.”
“You’d be correct…” Arkadin sighed. “I once dealt with a cult of canine creatures that would regularly rape then sacrifice younglings to some sort of fake volcano god. That was very quickly snuffed out as soon as I discovered it.”
“Are you not a god though, Arkadin?” Litvir asked. “Are you not all-knowing?”
“No. Never was, never will be. There’s a reason I called myself the Lord of Decay rather than a god. In the philosophical sense, I am not all-good, all-knowing or all-powerful. No being is all three, because all three is technically impossible. You can’t be all three at once without contradicting one of them.”
“Hm…” Litvir rolled over, eyeing Arkadin. “So, what was the worst thing you ever saw?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Maybe I do. Maybe, as a Decayling, I need to know?”
Arkadin snorted. “I don’t think I can tell you the absolute worst, but the feeling of destroying an entire universe, because it is filled by corruption and its creator-owner is begging you to save them, even though they’re too far gone… Well, that sticks with you. It’s the loss of all hope that hurts the most.”
“You…” Litvir paused, somewhat shocked. “You have destroyed universes?”
“Technically I have destroyed three. The universe we were all born in, Kinisis’s universe, is the obvious one. The other two, one was when I was very small, Kinisis loaned me to a neighbour to help kill a nearby universe. The other, I was kidnapped to and begged to help kill them. That was the… traumatic one. Only thing that made it was their time drake.”
“You kill universes, yet you have issues with sex?” Litvir blinked. “You are so strange.”
“Well, I was designed to be a death god. Intimacy is… Well… I was taught that self-love was wrong and that I’d kill anyone I loved. Sex was always something other people were only allowed to do. Combined with… the vague memories of what happened in my previous life, what can I say? These things are very hard to unlearn.”
“That is a shame…” Litvir grunted. “You are missing out.”
Arkadin shrugged. “Eh, one day I’ll get over it. It’ll be fine. Until then, just let me know if you’re gonna be using this room for sex or whatever. Because I feel bad walking in on you.”
“You have seen us both nude though…” Retvik grunted.
“Still,” Arkadin frowned, picking up the books he had put down earlier. “I’d rather not get involved. Not yet anyway…”