Just as Arkay’s friend had said, there was a small ship waiting at the edge of the universe, with six stripes down the side. A door at the rear of the ship was open, waiting for the three beings, however both Retvik and Kairos had to duck under the doorway to get in. Inside was some sort of cargo bay, which had been split into two areas, one side with actual cargo, the other side containing a small, crystal container, surrounded by various monitoring equipment. Waiting for them were six tiny, robotic creatures, all with large, glowing eyes, stubby limbs and oversized fangs jutting out of mechanical jaws.
“Hey, you must be Kairos!” a red mechanical creature stepped forward, showing its hand to the Whenvern. “Good to see you, Arkay, and nice to meet you too…” The creature trailed off. “Retvik?”
“… How do you know my name?” Retvik asked.
The creature shrugged. “We’re telepaths, apologies. Anyway, I see you got the message! Bring Arkay over here and we’ll sort him out for you.”
Kairos waltzed over to the crystal container, and let Arkay out of his plastic prison. However, the Thantophor wasn’t too pleased to be going from one cage to another. A brown creature nudged Arkay inside, then closed the translucent door behind him, sealing it shut with a blast of plasma along one edge.
“Do you have names?” Kairos grunted as he stepped back. “It has been… a long time since I last met you, but I was under the impression you were all just called Kal? And where are the Thantir Decay Lords who pointed us in your direction?”
The red creature bowed slightly. “Yes, we call ourselves Kal, but we have separate names.”
“And separate bodies!” a blue creature interrupted. “Thanks to-”
“Gah, please…” the red creature hissed, before falling silent, switching to telepathy. “Arkay doesn’t remember, and Litvir and Retvik asked us to keep things on the down low. They said to just fix Arkay, scan him for any mental blocks, then hand him back to his new universe and report our findings to the Thantir.”
Gah, the blue creature, seemed to sigh, then nodded. “Alright…”
“Sorry about that!” the red creature continued. “You can call me Tah. Gah, Nuh and Pah will be doing the extraction process, while Leh and Koh over there will be monitoring the situation and keeping an eye out for any anomalies.”
“And what does the extraction process entail?” Kairos lowered his voice. “Will this be painful?”
“Uh, a little, but we do have a question for you first!” Koh exclaimed from behind a monitor. “What sort of level of corruption are we talking about? Because, according to my quick analysis here, we’re talking about a level only just above viable Decayling levels.”
“It is enough for my sister deities to want him dealt with!” Kairos tutted. “You can do this, yes?”
“Of course!” Pah, the brown creature, seemed almost insulted as it got to work, covering the crystalline container in a warm wash of plasma energy. A small screech could be heard from inside, but it was brief. Pah then stepped to one side, letting Gah and Nuh, the black creature, take over. The crystal shook ever so slightly as Gah focused on the poor deity inside and Nuh made sure that the crystal didn’t move too much. Slowly, a faint black energy floated up from the crystal, which Gah collected into a ball and placed into a nearby metal container. Nuh’s attention switched from the crystal to the container, and, after a couple of seconds, the container vanished, imploding in a small blast of light.
“You done?” Tah asked as he helped Koh with the monitors.
“Yep!” was Nuh and Gah’s short reply.
Koh tapped on several keyboards, then checked several readouts. He nudged Tah, sending him a telepathic message.
“They have so, so many power and memory dampeners on the poor thing.”
“How bad is it?”
“Very. This corruption he got hit with, it’s an ancient one, but they’ve neutered him so much that he should have been able to fight it and couldn’t.”
“You think I should mention this to Kairos?” Tah’s eyes dulled as he scanned the screens again.
“Probably. Otherwise, best case scenario, we end up making frequent trips back here. Worst case scenario, dead universe. Again.”
Tah lit back up, patting Koh on the shoulder, before approaching the colossal dragon that barely fit in the room.
“Kairos, are you limiting Arkay’s powers?”
The Whenvern hesitated. “Uh, no, but Sini and Epani are, somewhat.”
“How comes?”
Kairos lowered himself down, so he was more on level with the tiny robot. This was quite difficult, since Tah was barely a metre tall. “Why are you asking? You have one job here and-”
“We wouldn’t need to be here doing this job if Arkay wasn’t being weakened.”
“He is being weakened?” Retvik awkwardly butted in. “But he is, like, the god of death already. Is he not already really powerful?”
“Could be more powerful…” Leh, the green creature, mused as he hovered by the crystal. “Used to be more powerful, back when we first met him. This crystal is soundproof, right?”
The rest of Kal nodded awkwardly. Tah backed off, letting Leh speak.
“The corruption we just pulled out of your little guy? He should have been able to do that himself. And he probably could have done it himself before you dragged him back into the universe-running business. We shouldn’t even be here, helping you out, but here you are! And I’m certain, back before we met you all, back in your previous universe, you kept him weak and depressed there too, right? You’re just asking for trouble.”
The Whenvern hissed, opening his wings defensively. Unsure what to do, Retvik backed into the nearest corner. The six tiny creatures though stood their ground. But before anyone else could speak, Koh, the white creature, left the monitors, holding a small device. He approached Kairos, waving it awkwardly in the Whenvern’s direction. After a few seconds, Koh stepped back, his eyes dimming slightly.
“You’re being weakened too.”
“I… I am?” Kairos stuttered.
Koh nodded. “Nowhere near as badly as Arkay is being weakened, but there’s definitely something weird going on. And it’s Life Goddess tech, something we can’t simply remove. You need to take Arkay and go back to the other two deities in your universe and have a nice, long chat about equality. Because you’re only endangering yourselves.”
More nods. The rest of Kal definitely seemed to agree, even if they weren’t as forthright as Koh and Leh were.
“Oh, by the way, Arkay’s all fixed!” Leh beamed as he tapped the crystal canister. It abruptly shattered, revealing an exhausted and slightly charred Thantophor, but one that was otherwise free of corruption. “He’s all yours. But you’ll want to give him a couple of days to rest. Being burnt is stressful.”
Arkay picked himself up off the floor, looking rather dizzy and delirious. “Is it over?”
“Yeah, it’s over!” Tah seemed to smile. “You’re good to go.”
“Thanks…” Arkay wobbled over towards where Kairos was standing. Retvik nervously left his corner, allowing the singed deity to lean on him. “Do we owe you anything?”
All six of Kal shook their heads. “Nope. Just doing our duty!”
“Can we go now?”
Kairos hesitated, then grabbed both Retvik and Arkay, dragging them off the ship, muttering a smal thank you as he did so. Kal waited for the three beings to leave, then started to clean up.
“So, Koh, did you remove any of those dampeners?” Leh asked as he summoned a broom and started sweeping up shards of crystal.
“Only a handful. Just enough for Arkay to be able to do his anti-corruption duties. We kinda stepped a little bit out of line, what with the Thantir requesting we not reveal too much.”
“Eh, what they don’t know can’t hurt them!” Nuh interrupted.
“We literally just had a conversation about how not knowing CAN hurt you!” Pah protested. “But, like, damn, Arkay didn’t recognize us at all. I thought we were friends.”
Koh though just seemed to sigh. “I did what I could with our limited resources. Life Goddess stuff is way above what we can remove. They’ll just have to somehow convince the other deities to it for them…”