Questions hovered in the minds of every mortal sitting around the wooden dining table, but none of them knew how or when to turn these thoughts into words. At the far end of the table, the Lord of Death was silently picking at a plate of pancakes and sausages, clearly not eating them.
“Are… are you alright?” Psiksi, the youngest of the mortals, finally asked.
“Hm?” Arkadin’s reply was little more than a grunt.
“Are you well?” Psiksi repeated himself, a little louder so the Lord of Death could hear him.
“No, I’m pissed off. About multiple things. Although right now I’m just miffed that I have to send you guys back home. If anyone asks, you weren’t here, you were in your ship and an EMP cut off your communications…” Arkadin sighed, then started pushing a piece of pancake around his plate. He had insisted that he make breakfast for his little mortal friends, but now he wasn’t hungry. Not that the Thantophor even needed food in the first place.
Retvik finished the last piece of sausage on his plate, then looked at Arkadin and smiled. “We appreciate you looking after us, Ar… Arkadin.”
“You were about to call me Arkay.”
“It is a… habit… I apologise…” Retvik smiled a little less, but quickly cheered up. “Still, I appreciate all of this. You did not have to save our lives, you did not have to look after us, you did not have to cook us breakfast, yet you did.”
“Well, the other couple of million things I saved aren’t aware of any of that, and everyone else will just think “oh hey the Thantophor struck again” rather than blaming Kairos and Epani…” Arkadin was still sighing. “You still got that tea strainer I gave you, Tenuk?”
Tenuk nodded and tugged at a chain around his neck. “I wear it as a necklace.”
“It looks dumb!” Elksia beamed. “Could do with some sparkles to actually make it look like jewellery!” Elksia smiled some more, then leaped from her seat and ran round behind Arkadin.”You know what? The same goes for you! You need some sparkles and jewellery!”
Arkadin sneered, then got up, taking his place with him. He scrapped the remains of his breakfast into a hole in the sink which led outside and down one of the many ‘recycling’ rivers that made up his domain. He then left the plate in the sink to wash up later.
“Oh come on!” Elksia was still beaming. “A rebrand would do you oh so much good!”
“How do you rebrand death?” Arkadin growled. “I kill things. That’s my job, according to every retard in this stupid existence. People will always fucking hate me. And they will continue to do so until the universe itself dies.”
“So… you’ll one day kill the entire universe?” Psiksi asked as he finished his plate of food.
“Yes.” Arkadin’s reply was yet again rather blunt.
“And you could do that…”
“Technically whenever I want to.”
“Okay I see why people are scared of you…” Psiksi shrugged, swishing his now empty fork around. “But now we’ve gotten to know you, we know you wouldn’t do that, that you like things being alive! Maybe Elksia’s right? Maybe a rebrand would help make people think better of you?”
Arkadin sat back down and stared at Psiksi. “Just because you think I’m attractive, doesn’t mean the rest of existence feels the same way.”
“If you showed up one day at a Grand Assembly in front of thousands of Skyans, we’d all bow down to you!” Psiksi explained. “Only reason we don’t do so already is because we don’t really know what you look like, and those Rethan anti-religion laws. You’re like the perfect specimen for us, absolutely gorgeous, and I can guarantee that we’d all want to sleep with you. Worshipping you in exchange for longer lives and the chance to be remade into something better when we die would be icing on the cake.”
The Thantophor blinked, then glanced at the others. “Are all Skyavok like this? I know I spent like forty years pretending to be one, but where did this rampant sex addiction come from?”
“It has always been there…” Retvik sighed. “They just hide it well.”
“Huh…” Arkadin trailed off, briefly lost in thought. “Well… Maybe it is worth considering. After all, everything I destroy, I recycle and send back to Yisini so she can make new and better things…” The Thantophor sighed, then glanced outside. “It will have to wait though. I have a lot of stuff that needs doing, I need to make sure that all that wreckage from the other day doesn’t block up any of my systems. It sucks whenever there’s a river blockage, can take hours to fix. And unfortunately that means I have to send you guys off.”
“That’s alright!” Tenuk remained optimistic. “We can come and visit you maybe?”
“Actually, I think I might come by and visit you!” Arkadin perked up a little. “I just have things I need to sort out first. And I think one of my siblings is popping by later and I need to get the place ready for them.”
The Thantophor got up and cleared away everyone’s now empty plates, throwing them in the sink.
“I assume the ship is outside?” Tenuk asked.
“Yeah. I fixed enough of it to make it work, but you’ll still need to take it in for repairs. I already packed all your stuff back inside the ship.”
Retvik and Tenuk both bowed in thanks, while Elksia resisted the urge to run up and hug the Lord of Death. Psiksi simply stood there, nervously, his head filled with conflicting thoughts.
“Thank you again, Arkadin!” Tenuk stepped forward to shake Arkadin’s hand.
For some reason, the Thantophor didn’t take it. Instead, he stepped back, sighing.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
Suddenly, the Dessaron were back inside their ship. Outside was nothing but empty space. In the distance, the remains of a planet could be seen, shattered by the blast of a massive explosion.
“We should head home…” Retvik finally muttered. “Everyvok will be worried sick about us…”
“Yeah, good idea…” Tenuk sighed as he started the ship’s engines. “Good idea…”