“Ugh…”
Arkay struggled to sit up, then immediately checked over his body. He was still Life Goddess-shaped. He needed to fix that. A deep breath did cause Arkay’s armour to return to his body, but as he checked over himself again, he noticed a new permanent scar on his side. One a little too close to another, much larger permanent scar. As he inspected it, all Arkay’s memories came flooding back. He remembered all of it. And it hurt. A lot. But what hurt the most was the failure.
He had tried to convince her to change. To walk away. He tried to show her care and kindness. She threw it back at him. She hurt him. Tried to kill him. So he turned into a monster and killed her.
Tears began to drip down Arkay’s face. He sobbed to himself a little bit, then took a deep breath and attempted to calm himself down. The tears didn’t dry up, but Arkay started to realise that he was somewhere unfamiliar. In a bed, partially covered by a delicate thin sheet, but not his own bed. In fact, the bed was actually somewhat small, perhaps a child’s bed or something. It was beautifully soft though. Like sleeping on a cloud.
Clearly, Arkay wasn’t on his ship. But he wasn’t in that strange Life Oasis thing either. He was in a dark room, there were stained glass windows on one wall and an ivory door on the other, perhaps leading to a bathroom. Arkay could smell unopened floral teas and the air tasted vaguely soap-like, with strong hints of lavender. But more importantly, there was a much larger bed in the room, and on it were two familiar faces, one of whom had just woken up as well.
“Hello, Arkay…” Litvir sighed as he took a long, deep breath, then stretched himself out.
“Hello, Litvir… where are we?”
“A six star hotel, apparently. Deathven wanted to reward us for our work, so we are spending a week here relaxing. And sleeping.” Litvir glanced at Retvik, who seemed to be dozing away quite happily, then turned back to Arkay. “Are you well, dear?”
Arkay shook his head. “I couldn’t save her.”
“Some people cannot be saved.”
“I know. But I tried. And failed. Miserably. She stabbed me with a Time Drake fang in a bid to kill me. But I also understand why, because she wanted change and believed that change could only happen via murder. And then I turned into a monster in retaliation and killed her.”
Litvir blinked in confusion. “What?”
“You… didn’t know?”
“The moment you were stabbed, Retvik and I lost connection to you. We raced down the tunnel to save you and found you unconscious and Prodota dead.”
Arkay sighed some more, then wiped tears from his eyes. “I think I turned into a Time Drake and killed her. Like Arkidetelos but potentially worse because Time Drakes are weird.”
“You were still a Life Goddess when we got to you.”
“Really?”
Litvir nodded. “I think Gynesa worked out that you were not a Life Goddess, but… well… she seemed to be aware of what was going on. She was never in danger. To the point that she killed Zizari and dropped her corpse in front of us, then attempted to kill us too.”
Arkay blinked. “Wait, what? Zizari was the Life Goddess who put us on that stupid mission in the first place!”
“Indeed. I honestly have no clue that Zizari was plotting anything but… well… I do not think she was. She wanted Prodota dead because Prodota had harmed Zizari in the past and that was it.”
“Ugh. So two Life Goddesses died for pretty much no reason.”
Litvir shrugged. “I guess. But that whole Life Goddess cult thing, they did not seem to… provide anything to anyone. And… well… Prodota had the chance to leave whenever she wanted. You gave her a chance and she did not take it…” Litvir trailed off, then tutted to himself. “I do not really want to think about all of that any more. And it seemed that Deathven did not want to either. He actually apologised to us.”
“He did? He said sorry and I was unconscious for it?”
“Somewhat. And Deathven has rewarded us with this hotel trip, followed by some time spent back at Savepoint.”
Arkay fell silent, sniffing to himself. “Well… I suppose… apart from the death… maybe… maybe this isn’t so bad?”
“It is not that bad. But you feel bad because, yet again, you tried to take a different, bloodless path, and, yet again, you ended up with unwanted blood on your hands. It was not your fault though. It just turns out that Life Goddesses across the entire periuniversal void are assholes, not just the Life Goddesses we have at home.”
“I hate how, yet again, you’re right…” Arkay tutted. “But you said we’re in a fancy hotel? How fancy is it?”
Litvir shrugged some more. “Honestly, very fancy. Like those old Cassid petticoat places with the big mansions and the servants and stuff. But we have not really explored any of it. We have been getting breakfast in bed the entire time. And they keep on giving us a lot of tea. I do not particularly like tea though and neither does Retvik.”
“You’re not alone there. I always hated hot drinks in general. Why have you not done anything though?” Arkay asked.
“Because we were waiting for you to wake up!” Litvir smiled a little. “We did not want to try new things without you.”
“Oh.”
“Yes.”
“I’m still tired though.”
“Understandable.”
Arkay remained silent for a bit. After some thought, he climbed out of his bed, then wobbled across the room and climbed into the large bed. He snuggled up next to Litvir and sighed to himself.
“Can we sleep for a bit more, please?”
“Of course, my dear!” Litvir beamed as he put his arms around Arkay. “I know your pain is lingering, but we are safe and far away from all that mess now.”
“Yeah… thankfully…”