“Hi, honey, are you alright?”
The last thing Kairos expected to see when he rang the doorbell of the Kinigi Gate was to see Kinisis herself. She was standing there, the little speck that she was, all happy and cheerful.
“Uh, hi, mum, I was going to ask the same of you.”
Kinisis blinked. “You were going to ask me if I was alright?”
Kairos nodded nervously. The Kinigi Gate was the only way inside Kinisis’s inner sanctum. But Kinisis was capable of expanding its walls as she pleased, vaporizing anything in its way.
“Yeah, uh, I heard some things. Not good things. Bad things about you.”
“What sort of bad things?” Kinisis opened the gate fully. “Come on in! Don’t stand outside like a numpty!”
The Whenvern flapped his wings then tucked them in so he could fit through the gate. He glanced back out behind him, signalling to the small army he’d brought with him to remain where it was. He stepped through the gate, which slammed shut behind him.
“Just…” Kairos stuttered. “Just bad things. Like, our brother being bad and stuff.”
“What about me being bad?” Arkadin appeared out of thin air. In his hands was a tray of freshly baked cookies. “What’s going on? Why is there an army outside?”
Kairos hesitated some more, finally letting some words stumble out of his mouth. “Uh, Kenon sent a letter to me. Saying that something was going on between you two. That Arkadin was being naughty and needed to be told off.”
Kinisis squinted at Arkadin then grinned. “Oh, Arkadin’s been really naughty. You should have seen how many cakes he ate last night. Like, seven. Seven whole cakes. That’s a lot of cakes.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have made them so tasty!” Arkadin smiled too, but his smile was rather awkward. “Do you want a cookie, Kairos? I made like twenty batches by accident. Kinisis’s teaching me how to bake things and this is the first batch I haven’t burnt or left severely undercooked.”
Kairos stared at the tray of cookies. They looked insanely nice.
“Uh… I’ll pass for now…”
“Why?” Arkadin asked. “You normally love cookies, right? Everyone loves cookies! People who don’t like cookies are sad, lifeless people.”
“I’m… I’m not hungry right now! I ate earlier. Like, a lot.” Kairos secretly applauded himself for his quick thinking.
“Well, why not take some cookies home with you?” Arkadin suggested. The Thantophor pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket then blew on the cookies, his dead, frozen breath instantly cooling them down.
“Uh, sure, why not?” Kairos shrugged. He accepted Arkadin’s gift and shoved the bag of cookies into one of his little void pockets where he normally kept his keys and stuff like that.
“So why are you here?” Kinsis asked. “You’re not here for the cookies.”
The Whenvern sighed. “I don’t know. I just heard that Arkadin was mind-controlling you and planning to take over the universe or something. I… I kinda wanted to come and…”
“Come and try and beat me up?” Arkadin tutted. “I don’t even have fricking mind control powers!”
Kairos and Kinisis both stared at Arkadin. “You don’t?”
“We all agreed that giving the Death Lord the ability to control minds was too powerful!” Arkadin was clearly getting angry. “You guys all limited most of my powers so I wouldn’t be a threat to you until the time was right!”
“Is the time right?” Kairos asked.
“No!” Arkadin rubbed his face wearily. “I’m tired of this. I’m going to go and check on that next batch of cookies.”
The Thantophor disappeared, tutting to himself. Kinisis and Kairos glanced at each other and shrugged.
“So, are you sure he’s not controlling you?”
“I’m pretty sure. You do seem to have thoroughly pissed him off though, so good job on that!” Kinisis winked and gave Kairos a cute little thumbs up. She then opened up the Kinigi Gate and waved at Kairos. “Maybe you should head off now.”
“Yeah, alright…” Kairos muttered as he flew off. “I got things to do anyway.
The Kinigi Gate slammed shut behind the Whenvern. He paused for a moment, studying his surroundings. There was a lot more debris out here than the Whenvern remembered. The debris… seemed familiar. There were lots of little bits in it. Little bits of armour and space ships and stuff. There were also little glistening red and purple scales scattered among the wreckage. Clearly Epani or Yisini or maybe both of them had been here.
“SOME FUCKER DESTROYED MY FUCKING ARMY!” Kairos roared as he flew off home. “THIS MEANS WAR!”