Priming

“Wow, five days. Five days, you ran and hid from the Veth I designated to pick you up and bring you here. Well, to you it felt like months, because there’s no real time here. But it was really just five days. Still, five whole days. Five days, you somehow eluded capture. I’m honestly impressed. Didn’t think you had it in you, kid…”

Death circled the large, electric restraining device. Part organic, part mechanical, it twisted around its unlucky victim, robbing them of the ability to move in any way.

“I mean, seriously. No one’s done that. Pretty much all my other Veth came here willingly. The ones that tried to run quickly relented once they realised they were dead and there was no way out. You though, you ran and ran and ran. And I honestly think you were prepared to do that for eternity.”

The poor creature tried to struggle, but there was no way out. All he could do was look straight ahead, with Death looming in and out of his field of view.

“Oh yeah, you can’t speak. Let me fix that for you!” Death beamed. She floated over and removed a biomechanical tentacle that had forced its way into the victim’s mouth.

“You liar!” Arkay roared, with all the strength he could muster. “YOU LIED TO ME!”

Death frowned. “Oh come on, Arkay! Don’t be like that! You know I need you. I just didn’t realise I would need you so soon.”

“TWENTY FIVE YEARS, YOU PROMISED! YOU BARELY GAVE ME TWO AND A HALF MONTHS!”

Death shrugged, then floated out of sight. Arkay tried to work out where she had gone, but as something powered up behind him, he decided he didn’t want to know.

“What are you going to do next? Kill my friends? Make me feel even worse? YOU’RE AS DECEITFUL AS STASIS AND KAIROS!” Arkay shouted.

“If you say so…” Death reappeared, putting the biomechanical tentacle back into Arkay’s mouth. This time though, he swore it went in deeper, rendering him unable to flex his throat muscles at all. Part of Arkay’s mind was panicking about not breathing, but the one thing he noticed when he arrived on Kinigi was that he had no pulse and wasn’t breathing anyway.

Death went back to frowning, standing in front of Arkay. She wanted him to know how sincere she was.

“Yes, I know I broke the twenty five years part of my promise. The rest of the promise still stands. Your friends will live long, bountiful lives. Kass and Psiksi are going to be a really nice couple. The League of Brightly Coloured Rethans is going to become popular. Elkay will be a fantastic ruler despite the fact that I STILL don’t know what the fuck he is…”

The bonds holding Arkay down started moving. Any mechanical straps were replaced with organic ones that wrapped tighter around Arkay’s body. Some of them were becoming incredibly invasive, poking and prodding at various parts of him.

“I mean, I could have waited. Even plotted out a nice way for you to die. You could have been resuscitated. You would have spent the next two months in hospital but your injures weren’t that bad until I made you bleed out. But I need you now, Arkay. Kairos and Kenos have their warriors. Powerful things. More powerful than most mortals. Even your sibling Ksa. I need a Veth who can spend time on the mortal plane and fight for them.”

Arkay tried to struggle, but it was no use. The mechanical parts of the machine were now turning into slime, enveloping him in a horrible, gooey mess.

“And I know what you’re thinking, why can’t I make someone else into a Veth Prime? Well, here’s the catch. I need a Veth who doesn’t want to be here. That’s why I broke my promise. Because you are almost perfect. I just need to do some tweaking, and you’ll be my new, sparkly, shiny warrior.”

The goo and slime was everywhere. Climbing down his throat, entering every orifice his body had to offer. As if the slime was becoming part of him.

“That stuff, that’s part of me. Entering you. This device takes your soul and gives it form. My form. My body. You are basically becoming an aspect of Death. I mean, you’ll still be you. You’ll still be Arkay Theanon, son of the Last Trehavok, daughter of the Rethan Mage, Left Claw of the Vice General, Blade of the Dessaron. But you’ll also be me.”

Arkay could feel his body changing. As if he was slowly being dissolved or something. The tubes and tentacles digging deep in his body started pumping something incredibly hot into him. As if Death was pouring molten lava into his body.

“It’s not lava,” Death tried to reassure him. “It’s basically the stuff you find in stars, cooled down into a liquid form. Still insanely hot. I don’t normally do that with Veth, but if you’re going to be coming and going between planes of reality, you’ll need it.”

Death watched intently as Arkay’s body began to mutate, his form changing into a more Veth-like shape, glowing rings of energy appearing on his body. Arkay wanted to break free, to escape this horrible procedure, but he found he wasn’t feeling much pain. In fact, it was almost pleasurable in some places, but the fact that he could have been enjoying this just made Arkay scared and angry.

“Alright, Arkay, it’s all going well, so I’m gonna leave you to it, alright? It’ll take a few days or hours or whatever for the changes to finish, and then a few hours to have you reprogrammed to be loyal to me!” Death waved passionately as a dark, shadowy mass wrapped around Arkay and his slimy cocoon. “Love you, dear!”

“Fuck you, you fucking twunt whore…” Arkay thought to himself as everything faded to black once more.