Elkay gasped for air as his eyes flicked open, only to find he didn’t really need air, and, more weirdly, he was in… one piece. Not two. He was also strapped to a bed, locked inside some sort of crystalline shell and, despite it being nearly pitch black, Elkay noticed he couldn’t access his shadowy abilities. A collar around his neck was stopping him. There was also a drip embedded in his arm, feeding him… drugs, or something.
Worse, there was a strange, underlying feeling Elkay couldn’t explain. When Elkay was a teenager, he’d been blessed by the Silent Blade, made into his Shadow, so he could be the spiritual guide and guardian of the Skyavok. Part of that blessing meant Elkay could sense the presence of the Silent Blade, almost like a compass. That sense though was… pointing at Elkay himself right now. As if HE was the Silent Blade.
That thought bothered Elkay, so he decided to think about something else. Mostly how he’d ended up here.
Awkwardly, the last thing Elkay remembered was… being cut in half. He was trying to save a Thraki leader via a long distance shadowjump. Because Thraki were much larger than Skyavok, Elkay was forced to do the shadow jump in an awkward way, by putting his arms through the shadow first, then pushing the Thraki through the shadow while keeping himself at the entrance side of the shadow, making sure the entirety of the Thraki had passed before Elkay could finish the jump himself.
But something had attacked Elkay and the Thraki. The accursed Corruption. A blackened claw had formed from the cancerous mass and grabbed onto Elkay’s tail. By contact alone, the Corruption had disabled Elkay’s Phantasma powers, and, as the shadow portal closed around Elkay’s stomach, he found himself severed in two. His last moments were filled with an odd calmness, as Elkay, his top half at least, stared blankly at the dark skies above Zero Zero, the light swiftly fading from his eyes.
Somehow though. Elkay was alive again. And in one piece. That annoyed Elkay somewhat. For a Skyan, Elkay was absolutely ancient, 121 years old. Most Skyavok died before the age of 120, and the longest lived Skyavok was 132 years old, someone who had also been a Shadow. Elkay lied constantly about his age, but in all honesty, he was somewhat hoping that this was it, that he’d die in one final blast of glory, as a hero to all. He’d never considered suicide or anything, but Elkay regularly longed to rejoin his wife, who had died thirty years ago. He loved his darling Teekay more than anything, and the memories of slowly losing her to cancer still haunted him. He’d never moved on either. He was old, he didn’t want to date again. He just wanted to be with his wife. And if that meant dying and his remains being buried alongside hers? That would have been fine.
But no. There Elkay was, trapped in the dark and annoyingly alive.
Both Elkay’s thoughts and the silence were broken by the sound of shattering glass, followed by crying. Oddly, Elkay recognized the cries. It sounded like the whimpering of a baby Rethan, but deeper. While the straps didn’t allow for much movement, Elkay did manage to turn his head, and he spotted that there was another cell thing to his right. That was the source of the shattering. But the cell opposite was less like a hospital bed and had been full of some sort of fluid, almost like an artificial womb.
Elkay tried to lean up, to get a better look. Whoever had been inside had rolled over, onto the floor, and was still whimpering. He caught a glimpse of familiar Rethan plating. A little too familiar.
“Kuta? Is that you?” Elkay shouted, trying to get the Rethan’s attention.
That worked, the Rethan struggled to their feet, but as they stared blankly at the person who had spoken to them, Elkay quickly realized that the being was too skinny to be their old Rethan ally. But they looked eerily similar. White plating, nearly black skin, silver upper-caste strips and, worryingly, a pair of fangs. But their eyes were purple, not ice blue. They were also quite tall and gangly, and Elkay guessed that they were a teenager, since they weren’t very muscular. Weirdly, their head strip, a piece of armour on their head plate, was incredibly long and sharp. This was normally used by baby Rethans to break out of their eggs when they were ready to hatch, but soldier-caste Rethans would always lose that strip within the first year, and even queen-caste Rethans didn’t have head strips that long.
“Uh, Rethan, who are you?”
The Rethan stared at Elkay some more. They didn’t seem to understand what Elkay was saying.
“Rethan! Are you alright? Can you hear me?”
More blank stares.
“Hello?”
The Rethan blinked, then tilted their head to one side, eyeing Elkay with curiosity.
“Hello? Will you fucking do something?” Elkay was starting to get annoyed now. “You there? Hello?”
The Rethan opened their mouth a few times. It occurred to Elkay that maybe the Rethan was in their Defensive Stance and couldn’t remember how to talk. Eventually, they started making sounds.
“Lello.”
“Yes, hello.”
“Lello!” the Rethan repeated, their eyes lighting up with child-like joy.
“You’re clearly an idiot…” Elkay tutted. “Can you get me out of here?”
“Lello?”
Elkay was admittedly getting genuinely annoyed now. Not only was he strapped to a bed in a dark room, trapped somewhere foreign and strange, but his only companionship was from a drugged up, potentially Defensive Stance Rethan teenager. One with a collar around their neck, similar to the one Elkay had.
The Rethan seemed distracted for a moment. They wobbled forward, then blinked in confusion as they realised there was glass between them and Elkay. They pressed their hands against the glass and stared rather intently at Elkay some more.
“Lello!”
“Hello.”
“Lel… Hello!”
“Oh. So you can talk. Can you get me out of here? At the very least, can you get me out of this cell? If you do, I’ll get us to safety.”
The Rethan went blank again. They clearly didn’t understand a word of what Elkay had just said.
“Ma. Mama.”
“I’m not your mum, Rethan. I’m a Skyavok. You’re a Rethavok.”
“Mama!”
All of a sudden, the Rethan headbutted the glass. Just like their own cell, the glass of Elkay’s prison shattered. Into very tiny, harmless shards, most of which seemed to fall weirdly to one side.
“Well, uh, thanks. Can you now untie me and get me out of here?”
The Rethan went back to blinking, then decided to climb on top of Elkay. Considering they were about 2.6m tall and naked, it was very awkward. The Rethan then snuggled up, making an odd purring sound.
“Mama.”
“Fuck, do you think I’m actually your mum?” Elkay snarled.
“Mama. Hello.”
“Ugh. You do…”
The Rethan smiled, looking quite happy. After a few moments, the Rethan fell asleep and started gently snoring.
Elkay sighed. He was uncomfortable now. And trapped underneath a clearly very strange Rethan. But before he could loudly complain and try and wriggle free, a bright light illuminated the room. A door opened up, and through it stepped an utterly beautiful being. She was a colossal, red, diamond-scaled Temthan-like being with a motherly figure and a long lure dangling off her head. She headed over to where Elkay and the Rethan was lying, and now that she was up close, Elkay realized just how huge she was.
“Oh, silly Litvir, did you wake up early?”
The being effortlessly lifted the Rethan up off Elkay with one hand, then waved her hand over everything, cleaning up the broken glass, before placing the Rethan back in their own cell.
“Uh… what is going on?” Elkay stuttered, watching as the Rethan woke up and tried to reach for Elkay. Epani nudged them onto their back and kissed the Rethan on the head, causing them to go back to sleep. “Are… are you the Panelix?”
“I am, yes.”
“What is going on? How am I alive? And who is that Rethan?”
“We saved you and rebirthed you. Please, my dear, go back to sleep. You need your rest.”
“What for?”
Epani smiled as she turned back to Elkay and stroked his cheek.
“Greatness and divinity, my dear. You, Litvir here and my ten other chosen children, you will be made into gods, to help Kairos and I rebuild the universe.”
“Oh…” Elkay didn’t know how to respond to that.
The Panelix leaned over and gently kissed Elkay on the head. Elkay immediately found himself drifting off into a deep slumber.
“Don’t worry. You’ll do great. Things will get better, with your assistance. Sleep well, my little angels.”