The Decayling observatory was very quiet. Only Litvir was present, idly flicking through a small pamphlet, while occasionally scribbling down notes on a nearby piece of scrap paper. The appearance of Galyn standing in the doorway almost caught Litvir by surprise.
“Are you here to check up on us?” Litvir grumbled, sitting up straight. He realised he had been slouching, and it wasn’t good for his back.
“I am. It seems your fellow young Decay Lords are still asleep, but you are up.”
“I could not sleep. Too many questions on my mind…”
Galyn tutted, then made his way into the observatory, sitting down next to Litvir. He was incredibly large and looked rather awkward in the small, plastic chair. Really, the seating in here was a bit small for Litvir as well, but he was too tired to care.
“Do you wish to talk?”
“Hm. Perhaps.”
Galyn leaned back, smiling a little. “What do you wish to talk about, Litvir?”
Litvir took a long, deep breath. “That is the problem. I do not know where to start. I wanted to ask why we all seem to have pseudo-elemental abilities, then I wanted to ask why we have to use weird code names and I also wanted to ask about sexual relationships between other Decay Lords. But my mind keeps on drifting back to the same Light-forsaken question.”
“What question?”
Another deep breath. Litvir looked uneasy. He turned to Galyn, sighing. “What did I do wrong, Galyn? Where did I mess up, to the point that I had to be killed? I thought I was doing everything correctly, despite my vast inexperience. Yet… they were so willing to kill me.”
Galyn paused, then rubbed his face. It was a good question. Difficult to answer. Galyn could clearly see why Litvir might be confused and upset.
“Unfortunately… Well… The Decay Lords have had a… lot of problems in the past. We used to accept pretty much any being that came to us. No matter who they were. This was fine for a while. We accepted beings, trained them up, made them into Decay Lords. Overlord Deathven constantly provided more and more resources.”
“Let me guess, someone took advantage of that?”
Galyn shook his head. “No. We took in someone unstable. They blew up the entirety of the original Deathven site, killing 10% of the Decay Lord population present.”
Litvir blinked. “What?”
“An emotionally and physically unstable Decay Lord, newly graduated, suddenly lost control of themselves. Their phthoric levels spiked, corruption got into their body and they detonated themselves, destroying almost the entire facility. Of course, we rebuilt. Only to have it happen again. More dead. A third event, called the Great Splot by many, nearly killed Overlord Deathven himself and wiped out the majority of Decaylings and Decay Lords.”
“Oh…” Litvir shuddered. “So… you nearly destroyed yourselves, then found yourselves erring too far on the side of caution and… just killing anyone who did not fit?”
“Better to kill one being than have thousands or millions die. But it was wrong, and I believed it to be wrong for a long time. Not only are the implanted trackers offensive and insensitive, but, well… to put it lightly, situations like… your one were… very common.”
“How many…”
“You do not want to know…” Galyn put his head in his hands, clearly upset about the topic. “They say things will change. But I do not know how well they will. I lost… perhaps too many to the level laws. Nearly lost Arkay to them. Losing you was the last straw, and that still nearly brought you to your doom.”
Galyn sighed some more as he straightened himself up.
“We still have not recovered from the Great Splot. The Decay Lord population will probably never recover.”
“Why not?”
“No one wants it to. The various Life Goddess alliances, the Voidborn and the Corruption would all prefer that we remain small, so we do not get in their collective ways. And back here at home… well, there have been rumours for aeons, suggesting that maybe the Great Splot was not an accident. Maybe we were attacked. No Decay Lord wants an obvious target on their back again.”
Litvir shrugged. “That is a shame. And here I was, thinking that you were all just major assholes.”
“Well…” Galyn smiled, just a little. “That is also somewhat true… But we are trying to be better, at least…”
“I appreciate that. Thank you.”
Galyn shook his head. “No, Litvir, thank you. Without you and your fellow Decaylings, we… may have never made the push to change. I am sorry that it took such a toll on you all…”