“Ah good, they’re already here…”
Veekay seemed quite happy. The journey to this barren wasteland had been awfully quiet, despite the fact that Elkay had many questions to ask of his younger brother. In particular, he wanted to know who was already here.
“Who-”
“That’s our brothers’ ship. I mean, if you’ve been around for a while, Time Drake ships are obvious. I mean, they don’t NEED to have scales painted on them, but they do.”
“Do you have a plan?” Elkay asked. “Actually, I do have a lot of questions.”
“You should have asked them on the flight,” Veekay tutted. “I wondered if you were just nervous or what you were doing. I really wish you’d have said something because…” Veekay paused, his attention switching to landing their ship. Once the ship had landed and the dust had settled, Veekay realised he’d stopped mid-sentence. “We need to catch up with our siblings before someone does something rash…”
Elkay nodded in agreement. A door to his right opened up, and he and Veekay exited the ship.
The land around them was dusty and horrible. Rubble seemed to litter the ground, as if there had once been a city where they were standing, only for it to be worn down over centuries of being abandoned. In the distance, a storm was brewing over a jagged mountain range. Between them and those mountains, the ground was mostly just dust dunes, plains and small hills of debris.
“What happened here?” Elkay whispered, drawing his weapon just in case. His gunstaff probably wouldn’t have done anything to a demonic death god, but it could easily take out a rogue scavenger or perhaps some other nasty thing.
“Ark- Telos killed it. Levelled the city. Did so about a hundred years ago. Thing is, you get death-worshipping cults coming to these places, believing that they can change Telos, turn the Thantophor into an ally. He comes back and devours them. Arksi and company must be following the same cult we-”
Veekay suddenly disappeared, falling down a rather small hole, perfectly sized for a Rethan such as himself.
Before Elkay could do anything, he found himself surrounded by four familiar figures.
“Brother.”
“Hello brothers, how are you all?” Elkay put his weapon down. He didn’t know how friendly they were. They worked for the Whenvern after all. Then again, it wasn’t like Veekay was any more trustworthy.
“Hi Elkay!” Psiksi and Eksi both jumped with joy. Thitaksi smiled a bit, while Arksi simply tutted and went to check on Veekay. “It’s good to see you! Were you frozen like us?”
“Sort of…” Elkay grunted. “Different circumstances. Veekay woke me up to assist in finding our middle sibling.”
“Yeah, Arksi’s been telling us all about that…” Thitaksi’s smile faded. “That he’s some sort of feral killing machine now, wiping out civilizations. Seems to think that we can capture the poor guy, rather than have to put him out of his misery. We brought along some sort of weird trap thing the Whenvern once used so we-”
“DON’T TELL THEM THE PLAN!” Arksi suddenly roared. “For fuck’s sake! We don’t know if they’re on our side or not!”
Thitaksi rolled his eyes. “We’re all on the same side. We’re all trying to stop a giant monster. This sounds super optimistic Psiksi-talk, but we’re better off working together than fighting each other.”
“Especially if Telos is levelling entire cities!” Psiksi added.
“Actually, he’s levelling entire planets…” Veekay pulled himself out of the hole, then slapped Arksi playfully on the back. “Nice trick by the way. Old classic… Anyway, yeah, Telos is destroying planets, that is how… horrible he is now.”
Everyone blinked and stared at Veekay.
“Really?” Elkay finally muttered, after an incredibly long and awkward silence.
“Yeah.”
“So… what if… you know…” Elkay was stuttering now. “What if Arkay decides to blow up this planet?”
In the distance, something roared. Something that clearly wasn’t thunder from the distant storms. Above them, the sky turned black.
“I guess we’re about to find out…” Veekay sighed as the six siblings readied their weapons…