Arkadin knocked on the large, wooden door. Inside, he could hear familiar but unwelcome sounds as Yisini was quite obviously enjoying herself with some poor mortal. As soon as Arkadin had knocked though, the sounds stopped and were replaced with those of something scampering away. After a few more moments, the door opened up, revealing a completely naked, purple, serpentine being covered in slime.
“Hello, Yisini.”
“Hi…” Yisini looked very nervous. “Is something wrong?”
“You could say that.”
“You… want to come in and talk about it?”
Arkadin glanced passed Yisini. The state of this particular building was… horrendous. And smelly. Arkadin was used to the smell of rotting corpses but this smell was… particularly unpleasant and fishy.
“No, I’d rather we stay out here…” Arkadin finally sighed. He summoned two small chairs and sat down on one of them. “We have things we need to discuss.”
Yisini glanced at the chair, then sat down as well. She was visibly shaking now. They both knew something was up.
“Yisini, what did you do during the first four seconds when Kairos was dead?”
The Allbirther hesitated, shifting awkwardly in her seat. Arkadin leaned back, making himself appear more calm and relaxed.
“Yisini, I am not angry with you. I am not upset, I am not angry, I am not anything. I just want to talk to you and set things straight.”
“There’s no punishments?”
“That’s not up to me to decide.”
Yisini slowly began to relax. She put her fingers together, tapping them in thought.
“I didn’t hurt Kairos.”
“I’m not accusing you of that.”
Suddenly, Yisini began to panic. She remained seated but held herself tightly.
“I swear, I didn’t hurt him. I don’t know what happened! But when I realised what was going on, I tried to deal with it. I couldn’t! All I did was take one millisecond!”
“One millisecond?”
The Allbirther settled, just a little. “I didn’t know what was going on. I felt that Kairos had… fallen. I thought that was it. Forever. That we were doomed. I thought time had become infinite so I took that one millisecond and I made the thing I always wanted, a perfect, immortal society! You saw them, right, they were cute and adorable and everything I want! I thought that this was it, so I wanted to make the most of that time and make something…” Yisini put her head in her hands. “I wasn’t strong enough… I tried to take it and fix it but I couldn’t control it… So I handed it over to you… and you fixed it… And I just ran off and hid because I didn’t know what to do…”
Yisini eventually looked up at Arkadin. She was genuinely upset. Arkadin gently put his hand on her shoulder.
“It’s okay, Yisini.”
“Yeah…” Yisini sniffed. “I know. You fixed it. But I… will you kill them? The things I made?”
“It’s not my decision to make.”
“Who will decide?”
Arkadin shrugged. “I don’t know. Kairos just wants to know what happened. Any… decisive actions won’t be done by me.”
“You’ll let them live for now though, right?”
“Yeah. They can live out their normal lives.”
Yisini’s sobs turned into a smile. “Really?”
“Yeah. For now.”
“Thank you…” the Allbirther whimpered as she wrapped her arms around Arkadin. “Thank you…”