“Hi!”
Galyn opened his eyes, then realized he wasn’t awake. He was trapped inside his own subconscious, sitting on the ground, lost in a dense jungle. One that reminded Galyn of the jungles he had grown up in, memories buried so deep down after aeons spent being a deity that he hardly remembered them. The trees were gigantic, covered in twisting vines, and the undergrowth was littered with flowers and fruits. Water could be heard trickling by.
Despite this beauty, Galyn felt concerned. He extended his wrist blades, ready to defend himself. That was when the small, yellow blur appeared next to Galyn. It fizzled in and out of existence a few times, before reappearing as a vaguely familiar face.
Galyn stared at the creature. It stared back.
“Hello, Arkay.”
“Uh, I’m not Arkay…” Eksi paused, and looked down at himself. Aside from his yellow plating looking slightly off, the rest of him was normal. His cream plating (which made up most of Eksi’s organic armour) was completely fine and dandy. He then turned back to Galyn. “I’d be a bit upset that you just assume all Skyavok are Arkay, even though he was never actually a Skyavok, but, eh, you don’t really get our ways. Really, the first clue that I wasn’t Arkay is the fact that I’m inside your head. Turns out, according to Litvir, the old Thantophor had really low level empath telepathy, because his siblings were utterly terrified of him, and he only got telepathy on the same level that we have when he became a Decayling. Kinda makes it weird that they then dragged him back to be their death god when they could have made a new one…” Eksi trailed off, then smiled. “I kinda hope to meet him one day though. Turns out I did meet him once when he was pretending to be a mortal Skyavok, back in my old DBA days, but I never met the Arkay you knew.”
Galyn lowered his head. “I apologise, Eksi. Where are we? Aside from, as you stated, in my own mind?”
“Well, you’re still welded to the wall of the cargo bay, if that’s what you’re asking. But in all honesty, I feel bad and Litvir feels kinda bad as well. Did you know it was his birthday yesterday?”
“I did not. How old is Litvir now?” Galyn asked politely.
“He hit the big One Hundred! I mean, Rethans, mortal ones, not genetic freaks like Litvir, tend to live to about 150 years old, but it’s still a milestone!”
“That is not a nice thing to say about your superior.”
Eksi shrugged. “I’m just stating facts. Litvir was not a normal Rethan, and he’s kinda not a normal telepath either. Although, I say that, the last three remaining Rethavok are all freaks. Yet somehow the last remaining Skyavok, Teekay and I are both pretty normal… Can’t really comment about the others though, Akah is the first Lanex I’ve ever met, and Phovos is like a thousand years old even though most Ksithans don’t make it to 100…”
The little Decayling abruptly stopped, realizing that they were rambling on. They looked at Galyn, then smiled.
“But yeah, everyone kinda felt bad, so Litvir allowed me one last attempt to try and fix you and scrape all the nasty Life Goddess stuff off the walls.”
“Uh, what walls?”
Eksi stopped smiling, sighed, then made a clicking noise with his mouth. The jungle around Galyn melted away, revealing a cold, grey box, its walls covered in horrible, white slime.
“These walls…” Eksi frowned. “Litvir and I have managed to make a pretty good mental landscape from which to work from, but you’re, like, really fucking old, so there’s a lot to clean up. Kal did their best and they did remove the Voidborn stuff, but Life Goddess stuff is way trickier. At least, whatever Kinisis did to you is way trickier. Ever since the Divine Guardians all fainted and muttered some random shit then woke up, they’re somehow completely clean. And much, much happier for it.”
Galyn stood up and wandered around the room. Eksi tutted, then summoned a broom and a bucket of water, and went to work scrubbing a section he had already started.
“Why do you feel bad, Eksi?” Galyn grunted. Being inside his own mind, seeing how broken everything was, it was rather disorientating. “I feel awful, I have made a vast number of mistakes, I have ruined the lives of multiple beings, I forcibly split up a Trio, abandoned my own Trio and I let a Life Goddess get inside me, forcing me to attack you all. But you have no such reason to feel bad.”
Eksi continued to scrub at the wall. “Retvik said he’s been mind-controlled a couple of times. He still feels bad, even though the only person he tried to hurt, both times, was Litvir. You feel bad about what happened, because, like Retvik, you’re a good guy deep down. Sure, having sex with a terrifyingly powerful Life Goddess like Kinisis was a bad idea-”
“How do you know about that?” Galyn suddenly shouted, making Eksi jump.
“I worked on that Life Oasis with you guys, I’m a powerful telepath, I have perception powers I can’t explain and I’ve been in and out of your memories, trying to fix you. And that’s on top of the physical evidence I took from your bedroom. I’m not stupid. You saw what you believed to be an attractive, kind creature and you fell for her. Turned out, Kinisis was a horrible, manipulative cuntbag narcissist, but that’s what narcissists do, they take advantage of good beings.”
Galyn hesitated. He still felt awful. But something about what Eksi said confused him. “What do you mean by perception powers?”
Eksi stopped what he was doing and turned back to Galyn. “My powers? It’s, like, impossible to explain. I don’t know if everyone does it as well, but I kinda just… know things. I know Akah is a former slave that has had his memories erased so many times that he disregards the few memories he does have, because he’s scared that, if he did find his memories, he’d hate himself. I’m aware that Elksia is heartbroken because she always wanted kids and now can’t, since she’s the last Vrekan, a species that no longer exists in any way what so ever. Meanwhile Tenuk is almost glad that the Kronospasts are now extinct, but he secretly believes he should have killed his own father and taken the throne for himself decades ago. Teekay is pretty happy, all things considered, but Elkay spends his nights silently staring at the ceiling, wondering what would have happened if he hadn’t sacrificed himself to the Allbirther to save, ironically, millions of Vrekans from Yisni’s wrath.
“Retvik may accept Litvir as his new partner, but they both know that Litvir will never replace Retvik’s old partner who he was married to for nearly fifty years, and I know that Litvir has had a genuinely horrible past, filled with blood and death, that he desperately hides because he wants to be a better person now. And don’t get me started on Phovos, an individual who has killed thousands in order to protect her kin, her people and her lands, only for it all to have been stripped from her, to the point that she wonders why she even bothered.
“I also know that Vikalos helped Arkay try and live a normal life, to the point that Arkay switched genders and fell in love with a stranger that he no longer remembers, despite the fact I’ve never met Vikalos and the only words I’ve said out loud to Arkay are “Hello”. And, despite Kal never talking about what actually happened to themselves outside of what they’ve shown us, I know that Tah is still traumatized by the fact that he watched his siblings die and spent a thousand years staring at their corpses, unable to save them. I’ve never looked inside any of Kal’s heads, but I somehow know this.
“And I know way, way too much about you. Like how you’re stuck in a relationship with someone who doesn’t even understand the concept of intercourse. Vikalos has tried, but you want to make out with Itaviir, who doesn’t feel the same way towards either you or Vikalos. And you’ve caught yourself staring at Retvik a bit too much. Although I kinda don’t blame you for that, since Retvik is technically the closest thing to being sexually compatible to you and he IS a pretty, shimmering fire god these days.
“Anyway, I’m also of the opinion that pretty much every single member of the Thantir needs to speak to a therapist, aside from Tahvra, and Tahvra’s only fine because he’s a Vohra and they don’t process emotions the same way everyone else does. That being said, he might need surgery to castrate him before the age of 50, since I don’t know if his balls grew back or not when Kinisis made him into a Divine Guardian. You think Rethans are scary, Vahrga are terrifying, and are too mentally addled to be able to stop being violent.
“But yeah, I know stuff. A lot of stuff. More than I should.”
Galyn stared at Eksi, not really quite sure whether Eksi was telling the truth or not. He felt very uncomfortable with this tiny Decayling revealing things that he had no way of knowing.
“Have you always been like this?” Galyn eventually asked.
“No, only since the universe blew up. I think Kinisis was kinda fucking with all of us, not just you”
“Does it bother you? Knowing all these things?”
“Sometimes. It’s nice to be ignorant occasionally. Being an empath doesn’t help either, since I pick up everyone else’s emotions if I think too hard…” Eksi fell silent and went back to what he was doing.
Galyn watched for a moment, then sighed. “Is there anything I can do to help? Whether it be in assisting you, allowing you to speak freely or, well, helping you scrub the walls of my mind?”
Eksi shrugged. He made that weird clicking sound again, summoning another broom and bucket of water. “Well, since we are in your own head, I don’t see why you can’t help me clean up around here. A bit of housework could help make us both feel better.”
The elder Decay Lord took the broom, then pressed it against the wall. The fact that some of the white slime came away somewhat easily did make him feel ever so slightly better.
“You will make a fine Decay Lord one day, little Eksi…” Galyn smiled ever so slightly as he went to work.
“You think so?”
“I know so.”