“Sooooooo, you’re a Mimic?”
Orion was pleasantly surprised. He’d originally thought that he and his Trio were just picking up a lost Decay Lord from a Voidborn eradicator sect, but it turned out that the strange, armoured purple Psion was not just a member of a fellow Hidden Named Trio, but also one of the leaders of a tiny Decay Lord sect that were looking to rebuild and change jobs. And this sect, the Thantir, were bizarre beyond belief. Not only did they have a Life Goddess AND a Time Drake with them, both of whom were in the process of getting certified as Decay Lords, but they had something Orion had never met before.
And Orion was an ancient, ancient being. So old in fact that he’d helped rebuild one of the original Deathven bases. He, Ziival and Eta had the trust of the Overlord, a place on his council, and a duty, to help lost Decaylings, to get them to Deathven or to the nearest Deathven-aligned Decay Lord group. But more importantly, the Wanderers were gatherers of information. Normally they went around exploring and documenting new places, but how could Orion turn down the opportunity to talk to a Mimic, in person?
“Apparently…” Elkay was admittedly rather distracted. He was very gently petting Orion. Orion didn’t mind. His physical form was that of a large, utterly adorable cat, and Orion had agreed to let Elkay pet him in exchange for Elkay answering his questions.
“When did you find out you were a Mimic? And what do you mean by ‘apparently’?”
Elkay shrugged. Sitting with him were his partner, a perfectly normal Decayling called Teekay, and Akah, who was another perfectly normal Decayling, but he just didn’t match the shape of everyone else in these parts. The Phantai, the Decay Lord sect that roamed and ruled the local sector, weren’t used to humanoid beings, and Akah had been designated a ‘weird one’. For this reason, he was sitting with Elkay, keeping the actual weird one company.
“Everyone just says I am a Mimic. I do not know how to confirm it. People only began to think it when I worked out how to borrow Elksia’s Time Drake powers.”
“Mhm…” By Orion’s side were a hovering voice recorder and a floating pad and pen, scribbling things down. “Borrowing time powers is one of the main confirmations. Decayons, even utterly ancient ones like me, can’t affect time, we’re reliant on Time Drakes for that. Have you ever been mistaken for a Voidborn?”
Elkay tutted, then glanced at Akah, who crossed his arms and tutted as well.
“I don’t even look THAT Voidborn-y!” Akah protested. “Sure, I wear a mask, but that’s about it!”
“Let me rephrase the question then. Have Voidborns mistaken you for being a Voidborn?”
Akah tutted some more. “Either the Crystal Doom are all idiots or I am starting to get concerned, because they just let me, a white mountain tribe Lanex, just wander around and place explosives as if I was one of them.”
Orion meowed, then turned to Akah. “Can you manipulate time?”
“No.”
“You’re a boring-ass Decayon like the rest of us. And also these Crystal Doom guys were clearly idiots.”
“Oh.”
Orion turned back to Elkay, purring as Elkay very delicately petted him on the head. Apparently, Elkay was the same species as Retvik and Litvir, and, genetically, he seemed like a mixture of both of them. But he was smaller, had a pair of wings and seemed much younger too. “So, what’s your relationship to the two young Decay Lords?”
“What do you mean, apart from me being a Rethavok and being Retvik’s half-brother?”
“Is that… it?”
Elkay shrugged. “I guess. What does that have to do with my being a Mimic though? After all, Elksia is a Time Drake but she was never a dragon, she has always been a Vrekan, and Phovos is still half Ksithan despite her mother being a Life Goddess.”
“Actually, I have a question!” Teekay butted in. “Phovos is a Life Goddess, sure, but apart from Eksi and Elksia, the rest of us were designated as Kiniseon Beings, creatures Kinisis made! Why are we not all Life Goddesses?”
“Maybe because we didn’t come out of Kinisis’ womb?” Akah suggested. “We all had purely mortal parents, Kinisis just came along later and tweaked things. And Elkay was the last Kiniseon Being Kinisis made, because she made him into one when he was, what, seventy something? Kinisis physically gave birth to Phovos, as far as we’re all aware.”
Orion nodded in agreement. “That sounds about right. Life Goddesses like to… pick out beings and ‘bless’ them, but they very rarely flat out give Zontanian Power to anyone apart from their own kids or partners. So, Elkay, you are not related to Litvir?”
Elkay immediately stopped petting Orion, picked him up, stood up himself and dropped Orion on the ground. Being a magical cat god, Orion didn’t actually fall and just sort of floated back up in front of Elkay.
“Sorry, did I strike a nerve?”
“You did.”
“How comes?”
“Litvir might be a tolerable being now, but his bloodline and family, the Kaldieridoi, they were literally the worst Rethan bloodline in modern times!” Elkay snarled. “You are suggesting that… alright, fine, I am a bastard child and I do not know who my mother was, but the Rethianos blood that makes up half of me is… was the finest of Rethan genetics!”
Orion just shrugged. “Firstly, your universe is gone, bloodlines no longer matter. Secondly, I admittedly can’t help but ask, because you have quite a few characteristics that match Litvir. You have psionic powers separate from your mimic powers, your skin tone is darker, you are not as well-built as Retvik is and you have longer canines. I can see them when you talk.”
“I am not related to Litvir. I… I do not think the… timelines add up anyway. I am 82 years old, Litvir had just turned 18 when he and Kuta killed Siona Kaldieridos. Even if I had been the very last egg laid, there would have been no one to genetically experiment on me…” Elkay trailed off, then tutted again. “If your next question is whether I am related to Arkay, then the answer is no.”
“Honestly? Guessed as much!” Orion chirruped. “None of the known Mimics have been related to each other. We’d hoped that, maybe, between… does anyone actually called Deathbringer Arkidetelos?”
Elkay snorted, then sat back down. “No. Not unless they want trouble. I will be blunt though, I know nothing. I do not know how I ended up being a Mimic, outside of “Kinisis experimented on me”. And Arkay does not know anything either, outside of “Kinisis experimented on him”. And, fortunately, Kinisis is dead.”
“Honestly seems like you lot know nothing either!” Teekay added. “All this time and you’ve never met one?”
“Well, uh…” Orion hesitated, not sure how to put his next sentence nicely. “Mimics like Elkay here are extremely rare.”
“And why is that?” Teekay snarled, getting defensive of his partner. “Decay Lord society has existed for so long that time has little meaning, and you don’t know where Mimics come from? No one’s studied them?”
“Uh, no.”
“And why not?”
Orion started purring. He needed to calm things down before he started talking. “Most of what we know about Mimics comes from two individuals. Unfortunately, one of them blew themselves up, the other got kidnapped by Life Goddesses. Neither they nor their carers knew they were being studied. Elkay here is the third active, living Mimic we are aware of, the other two being the third member of the Missing and an actively hostile entity that has escaped Deathven’s reach for year-strings after they attacked the Overlord Directly.”
Akah raised a finger. “That still doesn’t answer the question properly though. Even if we assume we’ve found three Mimics in five years, Teekay’s point that we’re all under-educated about Mimics still stands. After all, in such long time scales, surely there’d be nothing… new and original any more?”
“Yeah, that’s kinda because most Mimics are… killed before they can be studied. Mostly by Life Goddesses and Voidborns, because they consider them abominations, since they blur the line between the Two Main Kinds. But also…” Orion lowered his voice. Everyone else leaned closer to him. “Alright, I’m going to tell you three, I’m going to tell this to Litvir and Retvik, and I’m going to tell Lord Rhetvikalios and his nice little trio because-”
“Literally no one calls Vikalos that…” Teekay interrupted. “He doesn’t like it.”
“… I mean, fair. But I’m telling you Thantir because you seem to attract Mimics, and you deserve to know…” Orion hesitated again. “The Overlord doesn’t like Mimics. He’s been attacked by Mimics. His old partner Lifelord was attacked by Mimics. His closest friend, Everlord, was killed by what many believe to be a Mimic. He’ll look the other way when Mimics that are Decay Lords are in danger, and he’ll allow non-Decay Lord Mimics to be killed.”
Elkay frowned, then tutted, not sure how to hide how nervous he now felt. “So what do I do to make sure I do not end up like Arkay? Because we are due to do our Decay Lord Trial soon, and, well…”
Orion booped Elkay on the snout. “It’s pretty simple. Just stick to Decayon powers. Don’t borrow Life Goddess, Voidborn or Time Drake powers. That’s how they caught Arkay, he used a Life Goddess ritual to solve the riddle of their impossible trial.”
“… Impossible?” Akah blinked. “Why was it impossible?”
“Because of their task. “You are not alone. Move and fight until you are alone.” That’s impossible if there are three of you. The intended solution was that two of them would have to die so that one of them could live. They solved the trial by binding their minds together briefly. Luckily, Decay Lord Trials are less… barbaric now. Keep your head down, don’t do anything too Mimic-y and you’ll be fine.”
“But how can we trust that you Wanderers won’t just… report Elkay to Deathven?” Teekay tutted. “You seem to know way too much.”
“Well, you can’t. But you trust the Great Blades, you trust the Tattered Navigators, I hope you can trust us too. As to how we know so much? We’re Higher Decay Lords, we have a seat at the Overlord’s table, we’ve spent time with him. The three of us are ancient. So we know stuff.”
“I guess…” Elkay felt rather defeated.
“You seem like a nice guy. Keep your head down, never visit Deathven after your Trial and you’ll be fine. And thank you for talking to me. Must be annoying as heck, being questioned about something you hardly understand yourself. Anyway, I gotta check on the others, and we ought to be moving on soon. We got uncharted territories to explore!” Orion patted Elkay on the head, then nuzzled up against him.
“Uh… thank you too, I guess…” Elkay petted Orion back.
With a meow, the ancient kitty Decay Lord disappeared in a flash of light.
“Did that feel like a waste of time to you too, babe?” Teekay eventually muttered.
“No, but it has left me rather shaken…” Elkay sighed as he wrapped his arms tightly around Teekay. “I wish things could just be simple for once…”