Vikalos stood dumbfounded in the hallway as Itaviir knocked on the little door.
“You cannot be serious!”
“I am plenty serious.”
“You cannot entrust this baby Decayling to even make a half-decent cheese sandwich, let alone create-” Vikalos paused, realising the door had opened, revealing its occupant and the contents of its room.
Arkay sighed. “You could be a little bit quieter if you’re gonna insult me. I know I’m a handful but some sort of pseudo-respect to my face would be nice. Anyway, what do you want?”
Neither Vikalos nor Itaviir answered at first. They were no longer interested in Arkay himself, but at the six strange… things that filled up most of the space in Arkay’s room.
“Uh, are you going to actually talk to me or are you just going to stare blankly?” Arkay asked, looking somewhat worried. “I haven’t done something horribly wrong, have I? I was just…”
“You were building bodies for Kal?” Vikalos finally stuttered. “You created functional bodies for them? When did you learn how to do that?”
Arkay blinked awkwardly. “I thought you guys wanted me to learn all this Life Goddess stuff. So I thought I’d do something useful and try and, well, make something useful? Kal after all has been complaining about their lack of bodies for ages, and you guys dragged Retvik and Elksia off to do… something.”
Itaviir pulled Vikalos to one side. “See, I told you he had talent.”
“That does not mean that he is capable of producing deities! Mechanical suits are nothing compared to incredibly powerful, conscious beings!”
“You wanted me to do what now?” Arkay butted in, not really liking how these two Decay Lords were referring to him. Although, in all honesty, Arkay wasn’t that surprised. His entire life, people always talked about him but rarely actually to him.
Vikalos turned back to Arkay. “Apologies, but Itaviir has a rather ludicrous plan to have you create more Decaylings, due to the absolutely overwhelming demands of the Life Goddesses right now.”
“That’s fucking retarded…” Arkay tutted, before sighing. “I could have guessed that everyone would just want to use me as always. Guess I’ll be packing up and leaving then…”
The little Decayling tried to slam the door shut, but found that Decay Lord fingers were stopping it from closing.
“You are correct, it is a stupid idea and I apologise!” Itaviir hastily tried to explain as he forced the door back open. “We simply do not have enough Decaylings or Decay Lords!”
“Not my problem.”
“It will be when we no longer have any staff on hand to stop the Voidborn from attacking again!” Itaviir was clearly rather angry and embarrassed. “Our situation right now is that another Voidborn cult is attacking Life Goddesses, and us Decay Lords must step in to protect them!”
“At the cost of ourselves? No thank you!” Arkay grunted. “I’ve done enough time working for crazy fucking bitch deities! They can go and create their own stupid guards or whatever the fuck it is they want!”
Itaviir sighed. “Very well. We will not use you. But we require that you stay here for the time being. For your own safety. Have a good day.”
The Decay Lord pulled the door shut, leaving Arkay alone. Itaviir turned back to Vikalos, grunting.
“That was your fault…” Vikalos muttered. “But he raises a good point. We will just have to work with what we have available to us.”
“You mean essentially nothing. We have nothing right now.”
“Well… not unless we call Deathven…”
Itaviir growled, not liking Vikalos’s suggestion at all. “He will not be amused.”
“We do not have much choice. We either call home or we get overwhelmed.”
“I guess you are right…” Itaviir caved as the two Decay Lords headed back to their offices. “We will just have to get external help…”