Arkay was doing his best to be quick and efficient, but as Kairos squirmed in pain, it made removing the corruption slowly taking over his body very difficult. At first, Arkay had been cutting away at the corruption with one of his standard antiphthoric daggers, but he’d resorted to using high heat plasma blasts in order to stop the spread from getting too out of control. Yes, he was incinerating Kairos’s flesh, but the alternative was far, far worse.
“IT HURTS!”
“I know, I’m trying to do this as fast as possible!”
It didn’t help that, despite being slow, this corruption was aggressive. It was desperately trying to strike at Arkay, even as it evaporated, and the telekinetic shields Arkay was producing to protect himself were barely holding. To make matters worse, he’d have to stop every couple of seconds to deflect a random attack from the Corrupted Deity that had infected Kairos in the first place.
However, something else distracted Arkay. A hideous, pained screech that didn’t come from Kairos. Sini had somehow managed to stab Kinisis through the arm, but in the process, the Corrupted Deity had grabbed Sini and thrown her through a wall, knocking out the Allbirther. With Sini no longer keeping Kinisis at bay, she had turned her attention to Arkay.
“Then thelo na thn skotono, afou einai paidi mu. Allios, esu, Arkidetelos mu, then exo etsi provlimata…”
“That’s pretty hypocritical of you, not wanting to kill Sini, when Corruption is basically death anyway!” Arkay hissed, edging away from Kairos. He didn’t want Kinisis to reinfect him, especially since Sini had spent so long keeping Kinisis away from them both.
“Alithina, thelo mono na skotono esena, Arkidetelos…”
“I’m not Arkidetelos, not any more. Haven’t been for two billion years. And if you only wanted to kill me, why the fuck did you infect Kairos?”
Arkay was stalling. He couldn’t both finish off removing the corruption from Kairos and fight Kinisis at the same time. However, Kinisis wasn’t giving him any choice as she laughed and charged forward, slashing at Arkay with silver blades. As she did so, Arkay noticed that his actions seemed oddly slow. Kinisis was abusing Kairos, forcing him to slow time around Arkay. Being the End of the Forward Flow, Arkay had some sort of resistance to Kairos’s control over time, but that made dodging Kinisis’s attacks and retaliating with strikes of his own very difficult. Sure, Arkay did manage to slice off Kinisis’s tail, but at the same time, she managed to slice off Arkay’s left arm and wing. Knowing he needed to get rid of the potential corruption from his body, Arkay kicked Kinisis away, then incinerated his own wings and cauterized the wound where his left arm used to be.
“Ow. I kinda need that…” Arkay didn’t really react to the pain, but with Kinisis currently not present, he immediately turned back to helping Kairos, using a blast of fire to melt away some corruption that was crawling out of the wound in Kairos’s neck.
“Are you alright?” Kairos muttered, hardly moving, still chained down and in too much shock to really do much else.
“I’m fine. Just a flesh wound…” Arkay snarled, going back to work. Both he and Kairos had noticed that they could hear Epani circling, but couldn’t see where she was. However, Arkay quickly realized why Kinisis hadn’t immediately come back to attack the two male deities, because she too had realized that Epani was present.
“Koritsi mu, elathe kato, elathe sta heria mu, elathe na mu dineis to somateio su!” The Corrupted Deity’s words echoed around the shattered arena and the crystal dome.
The word “NO” echoed back as ten tons of crystal collapsed from the ceiling of the dome, an attempt from Epani to attack Kinisis without getting too close. Diamond shards fell from above like a torrential downpour, slicing through anything in their way, tearing through Kinisis’s skin. The Corrupted Deity though only briefly accepted this pain and created a shield above herself, her black, toxic eyes locking in on Epani’s location. The Panelix may have hidden herself from the normal light spectrum, but under infrared, she glowed brightly like the star she was.
Before either Arkay or Kairos could warn Epani, Kinisis summoned and fired a shadowy, corrupted spear which immediately pierced the Panelix, making her collapse somewhere on the other side of the arena. Kinisis briefly turned to face Kairos, forcing another spear through his wing and tightening the corrupted chains around him. Realizing that time had begun to slow down again, Arkay made the desperate decision to help Kairos, hoping that Epani could last a few minutes longer. After all, Arkay couldn’t save Epani if none of them could move, due to time being frozen.
At least Sini had returned to consciousness, and had rushed to Epani’s side. Not that it mattered, because Kinisis was approaching, her laughter bouncing off the crystalline walls.
However, something stopped the Corrupted Goddess in her tracks. To Kinisis’s right, there was a perfect copy of her current body, but without any of the dark corruption running through her veins.
“Uh, hi?” the copy waved weakly.
“Ti paraxenio atomo eiseste?” Kinisis asked.
“Uh, sorry, I don’t speak Corruption…”
Kinisis tutted, then switched to the primitive language this being was speaking. “I asked, what strange being are you? What mockery are you, taking my current shape?”
“Oh! Good question! I’m kinda just a distraction.”
Before Kinisis could tear this copy in half, something heavy shoulder-tackled Kinisis to the ground, while another creature clumsily stabbed her through the hand. The copy darted off, and Kinisis climbed to her feet, pushing the strange, green, feminine being over to give chase. As she did so though, the big, heavy, armoured thing grabbed Kinisis’s arm and threw her to the ground again.
Realizing that this brute was stupid enough to keep on attacking her, Kinisis turned her attention to it.
“Enomiza oti su eskotineisa, Retvik mu?”
“Did you… just say my name?” the heavily armoured creature asked, clearly confused.
“Oh. Ao, then milisate thn glossa ton deitheion!” Kinisis frowned. “I thought I already killed you, my little Retvik.”
Retvik blinked, still obviously confused. “I somewhat thought we already helped kill you too, so maybe we are both wrong?”
The Corrupted Goddess snarled, extending her blades, only for something to hit her on the head. A rock. The most primitive of weapons. Kinisis twisted herself around to face her attacker, which turned out to be the female reptilian being again. Standing by its side was a yellow-armoured creature that looked like a much weaker, much more mortal version of her own son, Arkidetelos.
Ignoring the being that clearly couldn’t have been the Decay Lord she had left bleeding out, Kinisis charged into the two mortals. To her surprise, only the green one leaped out of the way, and the yellow one seemed to intentionally leap up at her, grabbing onto and pulling at her head, pulling her… into the shadow? However, at the same time, ‘Retvik’ had wrapped his brutish claws around Kinisis’s arms, stopping her from falling into the shadow completely.
Suddenly, Kinisis fell downwards, reappearing somewhere else. Or, at least, the bit of her that the yellow-armoured being was holding onto did. Kinisis realized that her head had been separated from her body, and her head was now resting in the shadow of the Whenvern, the chains around him having been removed. The little yelllow creature had scampered away, pulling itself back through the shadow and returning to its fellow mortals.
“Tha mu skotonete ke eseis?” Kinisis asked. “Meta apo ola avta ta makrokronia?”
“Yeah, I’m going to kill you, Kinisis. As you deserve. I am sorry we couldn’t save you, Seimeni.”
Kairos opened his jaws wide and released a torrent of shimmering silver flames. In an instant, Kinisis’s head vaporized. Across the arena, the rest of Kinisis’s form evaporated, as Arkay melted it down with a mixture of antiphthoric blood and acid.
“Arkay, your arm…” Nyssi muttered as she and her team all cautiously approached.
“It’ll grow back…” Arkay sighed, but his focus was elsewhere. Without another word, he pushed past the mortals and leaped across the arena, to where Epani had fallen. The Whenvern briefly soared over them, also joining his fellow deities.
Epani was lying motionless as Sini tended to her wounds. To one side was a black spear, covered in gold and red blood. While Epani was unresponsive, she was at least alive. The deities of Life and Death were making sure of it.
“She’ll be back…” the Whenvern growled.
“Yeah. But I’ll kill her again and again. Forever, if I have to…” the Thantophor murmured.
“No, WE will kill her again and again!” the Allbirther hissed. “This is our universe. We built it together. It lives and dies by our hands, and we’ll protect it from Kinisis and whatever else threatens us…”
Sini trailed off, then placed her hand against Epani’s face. The Panelix’s eyes briefly opened, before wearily closing again.
“Epani will be alright, yes?” Kairos asked awkwardly. “It… hurts, seeing her like this.”
Sini nodded. “She’ll heal. It’ll take time though. Time I can’t use to fix the holes in your wings or Arkay’s missing arm.”
“Eh, we’ll heal as well…” Arkay frowned, glancing down at where his left arm used to be. “But the whole universe kinda just saw us all nearly lose to a feral, corrupted beast. They’re still watching, I think.”
“Yeah, well, I think a lot of them knew we weren’t perfect anyway…” Sini hesitantly muttered. “The universe though is safe for now. Kairos, check the walls, then fix yourself up and go sleep for a bit. Arkay, take some time off, you deserve it. I’ll nurse Epani back to health and make sure everything keeps on running. We can just put the universe on autopilot for a bit, until Epani’s better.”
With a sigh, Sini disappeared, taking the still unconscious Panelix with her. Kairos reared up and opened his wings, taking off into the air, but not before disintegrating the remains of the crystal dome that covered the now ruined arena and vanishing through a portal. Arkay though wandered around for a bit, then sat awkwardly on the ground, not sure what to do.
After what felt like a long time but was only a few minutes, Arkay found he was no longer alone.
“Thanks for the help, guys. Saved our asses back there…”
Retvik, Nyssi, Kayel and Tenuk all sat down next to Arkay, not really sure what to say.
“Uh, you’re welcome, I guess?” Tenuk eventually shrugged.
“So, uh, what happens now?” Kayel asked.
“I honestly couldn’t tell you…” Arkay sighed. “But, no matter what, things are going to be great for you.”
“Why’s that?”
“As far as everyone else is concerned, you four just saved the universe…”