“Arkay.”
“Kairos.”
The Whenvern had been mightily suspicious when he’d received a message to head to one of Sini’s labs. He’d expected to speak to the Allbirther herself, but no, floating above the strange, vine-covered lab was someone Kairos did not want to see.
“I am not apologising for stabbing you.”
“Of course not. The mighty Dragon God of Time doesn’t do apologies!” Arkay tutted. The Thantophor was clearly angry, but trying to remain somewhat calm. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“We have nothing to talk about. You attacked Epani, I defended her.”
“And you’re not going to use your mastery of time to consider why I attacked Epani?”
“No.”
Arkay blinked, dumbfounded by Kairos’s answer. “… Why?”
“Epani and Sini are the matron deities of this universe. They’re Life Goddesses. They’re in charge. You know better than to threaten them.”
“It doesn’t matter if they’re in charge or not. I don’t deserve to be treated like shit just because I’m a lesser deity… And I’m not even a lesser deity! I’m a Life Goddess too!”
Kairos snorted. “As if.”
“I fucking well am. You know I’m some sort of strange hybrid, that I’m part Life Goddess, part Time Drake, part Decayon. But that’s beside the point! My reasons for attacking Epani were completely legitimate!”
The Whenvern snorted again, then awkwardly crossed his arms, hovering in place. “You should have solved things with words, not violence. You know better than that.”
“Sometimes some people only understand violence!” Arkay snapped back. “Epani was quite happy to just laugh at me, to mock me and my suffering! My pain is just a joke to her!”
“You still shouldn’t have-”
“Oh, shut it!” Arkay wasn’t going to let Kairos continue. “Put yourself in my place for a second! Imagine what it’s like, being told that you need to basically stop fucking talking to people for a decade! What if Epani told YOU that you had to give up your relationships and your friends, that you weren’t allowed to talk to your worshippers or anything like that?”
“I would just suck it up and get on with my life. Ten years isn’t even-”
“That was all a lie! Epani gave me fake nightmares! There was no actual threat, Epani just wanted to hurt me! And you just let Epani lie to me! You… you’re just as bad as Epani.”
Kairos leaned forward, until his snout was in Arkay’s face. “Take that back.”
“No. You ARE just as bad. You didn’t double-check the future flashes, you didn’t verify them to make sure they weren’t fake, YOU put me through this torment too!”
“Fine, you are right that I didn’t verify things, but you were the one who thought you could turn into Arkidetelos, I was just doing what I had to do!”
“You let Epani have her way. And when I pointed out that Epani was a bitch, you jumped to her side! Why can’t you seem to understand that she made me suffer and I’m angry for her making me suffer! Seriously, how the fuck would you feel if I forced you to stop seeing Phovoula, then it turned out that I lied to you?”
Kairos fell silent. He’d been seeing his little Ksithan girlfriend on and off for a while now, and he did genuinely like her. He’d be sad if he had to stop.
“Alright, fine. You have a point. Still, I can’t let you hurt Epani or Sini.”
“And why not?”
“I…” Kairos hesitated. “I… it… it’s wrong. They’re Life Goddesses. We can’t kill them. We’ll damage the universe.”
“I don’t want to kill Epani. Well, I do, but I’m willing to wait until the end of the universe to do so. I just want Epani to feel pain the way I felt pain. I want her to suffer how I suffer. I’m not going to kill her, I’m not even going to draw blood. I’m just going to break Epani. And Sini will make sure that I don’t go too far.”
“So why did you summon me here?”
Arkay poked Kairos on the snout. “Because I want you to make a promise to me. You understand that Epani has been treating me poorly, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And you get that Epani’s only going to get worse, right? She might treat you fine now, but she’ll get bored of hurting me eventually.”
“… I can see that happening, yes.”
“So you understand that Sini and I need to step in, before Epani turns on all of us, yes?”
Kairos nodded. “I do.”
“Alright. So… I want you to promise that you won’t get involved with my plans. You keep your stupid dragon butt out of this. What I have planned is between me and Epani, and I don’t want you getting in the way. Can you promise me that?”
“I promise. But I want you to promise that you won’t kill Epani. You do your stupid revenge stuff, then things go back to normal.”
Arkay rolled his eyes and sighed. “Can’t just have someone do something for me without immediately asking for something in return, can I?”
“No. You make demands, I make demands. Will you promise that you will not kill Epani, and that everything will go back to normal after this?”
The Thantophor frowned, not wanting to answer straight away.
“I will not keep my promise if you do not keep your promise.”
“Alright, fine!” Arkay growled. “I promise that I won’t kill Epani, and I promise that we will return to some semblance of normality when all this is over. You’d better fucking keep your promises, because I always keep mine!”
“Very well. Farewell, little one.”
“Bye, Kairos.”
Satisfied, Kairos stretched his wings out and flew away, disappearing into the darkness. Arkay waited for Kairos to be completely gone, then sighed to himself and made his way back inside Sini’s lab. He didn’t want to be there, but Sini’s domains were the few places where Epani wouldn’t directly look for him.
As Arkay set to work on the final details of his plan though, he felt somewhat uneasy. With a tut, Arkay pushed that uneasiness to one side. He had things to do. He didn’t have time to feel uneasy.