“Where the fuck did I leave those?”
Kairos was confused. He had been racing across the Deitonic Sector for hours, searching for literally anything in regards to a specific race. But all the Time Dragon had stumbled across were abandoned forts and ruined cities.
It wasn’t that Kairos hadn’t found anything alive. He had run into plenty of life, including groups that this race had fought against or even tried to destroy. He had stumbled across an entire forest of the armoured creatures that had once been used as war beasts for this race. Foliage had sprung into existence in what had once been heavily polluted areas, and massive, twisting vines had taken over several of the abandoned cities.
But of the race themselves? They were… gone.
Tired of searching, Kairos decided to retreat to the nearest crystal palace that he called home. He was planning to send messages to the other deities, but, to both his joy and his surprise, the god he wanted to talk to was sitting at Kairos’s grand dining table, eating a plate of pasta.
In hindsight, that sentence seemed odd, even to the Whenvern. But everyone knew that Arkadin, the Lord of Decay, was a rather strange being.
“Hey, Arkadin, what are you doing?”
The Thantophor didn’t reply at first. As Kairos drew closer, he realized Arkadin was tapping on a small screen, writing a message to an unknown other. When he was finished, Arkadin turned up to Kairos, smiling.
“Oh heya. I was just text chatting with a friend. What’s up?”
“Huh. Cool. Well, I was wondering if you could help me with something?”
Arkadin’s smile flickered slightly. “Does this involve stopping what I’m doing? I just made this cheesy pasta.”
“Oh no, not at all!” Kairos spoke calmly and slowly. While Arkadin was an insanely powerful deity, maintaining the delicate balances of decay and death, he was also rather tame and safe. Most of the time. The Thantophor was known to turn in an instant when angered. “I just wanted to ask if you had seen any of my Anexartitai.”
“Your what now?”
“You know! Anexartitai! The small, bite-sized Thropic Deiton species. The ones that were at war with the Kronospasts for ages.”
Arkadin looked rather blank. Clearly Kairos’s words weren’t quite getting through to him. “You know, those tiny masked military assholes!”
“Huh…” Arkadin shrugged, taking a spoon of pasta and quickly swallowing it. “Those assholes.”
“You remember now?”
“Yep.”
“Where are they?”
The Thantophor shrugged. “They’re extinct.”
Kairos’s eyes widened. “They’re… extinct?”
“Yep.”
“What happened?”
After another spoonful of pasta, Arkadin began to explain. “They took the whole losing to the Kronospasts thing pretty badly. Splintered into a myriad of smaller, warring tribes. Most races are fine when that happens because they’re not military powers with insanely destructive tech. The Anexartitai basically just nuked themselves to oblivion.”
Kairos sighed, not liking Arkadin’s explanation. “So they’re all gone.”
“Yeah. Well, the last three hundred of them were still around as recently as last year… But they attempted to create their own god and then disappeared inside a logic-induced black hole which took me a fucking week to fix.”
“Hmph. That’s no good. I wanted to speak to them.”
“Can’t now.”
“Are there genuinely none left?”
“Yeah. The small issue with telepathically connected Deiton races is that if one group does something idiotic, they all do.”
The Whenvern tutted, folding his wings and crossing his arms. “That sucks. I wanted to talk to them about re-establishing connections. You know, rebuilding ties, rather than putting all my eggs in one incubator the way Kenon has with his Rethavok.”
“Well, they’re fucking dead. But…” Arkadin paused. “Hm. Have you tried talking to the Lanex? Or that weird crystal dragon race that Yisini made and then forgot about?”
“What crystal dragon race?”
Arkadin shrugged, returning to his pasta. “The ones that worship you. Tragons or something.”
“Hm. I think I will do that then!” Kairos smiled. “Thank you for the knowledge, brother!”
“No worries. You want some pasta before you go out?”
The Whenvern shook his head, unfurling his wings again. “I am good, thank you. I have things to do. See you later!”