Vikalos enjoyed the little corner he had built for himself, right on the edge of Savepoint. Sure, there was no lake here, but Vikalos could just gaze off into the void, watching the pink clouds of the Athata Rift slip by. There were three deck chairs there, one for Vikalos and two for his colossal Beh’en partners, but those two were always busy.
That being said, Vikalos could hear someone approaching him.
“Hi, Vikalos.”
“Oh, hello, Arkay!” Vikalos beamed. He patted the empty seat next to him and beckoned Arkay over. “Is something wrong?”
Arkay hesitated a little, then gently sat in said empty seat. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Are you having identity problems again?”
“A… a little. But I don’t want to bother anyone. Litvir is asleep, Retvik is busy and I really don’t want to share with Elkay because he picks things up from me. And also he’s asleep too. You… you used to look after me. I think you’d understand.”
Vikalos summoned some fresh drinks, just some diet soda. “That is understandable. What’s bothering you right now?”
Arkay took the drink, sipped it, then sighed. “I just feel… really, really old. But I hardly remember anything.”
“That’s perfectly normal for long-lived beings like us. Arkay, darling, you are admittedly old anyway.”
“Ugh…” Arkay tutted, quite loudly. “Elksia and Thassalin seem to think I’m as old as Galyn is.”
“There is nothing wrong with being old. I’m old. Utterly ancient. Not as old as the First Mother and many of her children, but it isn’t something you need to worry about.”
“It is though! I have so, so many gaps in my memory! And the ones that do stick around? They’re always the really bad memories. Why do I remember when I turned into a monster and ripped a Life Goddess in half but I can’t remember me sending flirty messages to Kuta a week before I lost myself? Why do I only remember the pain?”
Vikalos thought for a moment. “I don’t really know for certain, but the bad memories stick around because they leave more scars, especially if your bad memories are of being physically hurt.”
“But… what about the good things? Why the fuck can I not remember good things that happened?”
“I admittedly don’t have an answer for you.”
Arkay sighed. “Thought as much.”
Vikalos turned to Arkay. “Is there something specific that you want to remember?”
“Yeah. My time as a mortal. The good bits, at least. Would have to make room for some bad bits as well, but…” Arkay trailed off, then sniffed and remained silent for a bit.
Vikalos grunted, then decided to alter the conversation a bit. “I was never mortal. I was made as a deity from the stat, and told to punish the wicked then seal them away in my domain of hell. I never really questioned any of that, I just did as I was told. Didn’t even really get a choice as to who was sent to hell, that was always the duties of the others. I’m somewhat glad I got to forget most of that.”
“There are long periods of time that I don’t remember at all. There’s a lot of things I don’t want to remember. And what I do remember, it’s painful. I don’t like that it hurts so much.”
Both of them fell silent. Arkay sighed some more, and Vikalos sipped his drink. After a fairly long period of peace and quiet, Arkay decided to speak again.
“I wish I knew about the ecosystem out here when I was young.”
“How comes?” Vikalos asked.
Arkay closed his eyes and tutted. “I had a chance to leave. I’ve had many chances to leave. But I remember my first time, where I tried to leave, and was stopped from doing so.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was about three months after I died in that alley. Kinisis tortured my, uh, soul or something and turned me into a Veth, basically a fragment of Kinisis herself. Only difference was that I was turned into a monster because Kinisis broke her end of the deal. I slaved away for her and she’d torture me in her spare time.
“At some point, Kinisis decided that I should be her companion or something, and when I told some other Veth, they told me that I was utterly fucked. They told me to run and keep on running. They even gave me a map, a hole in the universe’s borders, from which I could escape. At the time, I didn’t know there was stuff out here. I thought I’d just die, cold and alone, drifting through an eternal darkness.
“I was fine with that. I made my way to the hole but needed to make it bigger. Once I did that… well… I hesitated. Just for a moment. Just enough time for Kinisis to recapture me and start the suffering all over again.
“I think about that memory a lot. I could have escaped, I could have been free. I would have completely and utterly changed the flow of reality. But one brief moment of doubt cemented the eternal pain I was put through.”
Arkay fell completely silent again, then closed his eyes, crying just a little. Vikalos noticed that Arkay’s tears weren’t black, they were blue.
After a good minute of silence, Arkay opened his eyes again, then went back to sighing.
“Are you alright, Arkay?”
“Not really.”
“Did getting that off your chest help at all?”
Arkay grunted. “No. It just caused me to briefly do Time Drake stuff. Alternate paths aren’t fun.”
Vikalos patted Arkay on the shoulder. “You’re right. Thinking about how things could have been is an easy thing to do, and it hurts because you consider how things may have changed for the better. But alternate paths are rarely actually good, you just believe they could have been better. The grass is always greener on the other side, as folks sometimes say.”
Arkay frowned. “I hate being me sometimes.”
“Understandable.”
Arkay was about to sigh again, but he paused and turned to Vikalos. “Are you not going to give me some wisdom or advice for all this stuff?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Vikalos stretched himself out, then yawned. “You’ve heard it all before. You came here to vent, you’re not here looking for a solution, at least for the moment. When you want advice, you’ll ask for it, and I will assist you.”
Arkay paused for a moment, trying to digest what Vikalos had just said. “Hm. I guess you’re right.”
“Do you want advice right now?”
“Not really.”
“That’s fine. Would you like to sit here with me for a bit and watch the nebulae float by?”
Arkay smiled, just a little. “Yeah, sure.”