Phovoula breathed a sigh of relief as a familiar ship landed at the Pink Paradise, but that sigh was completely overwhelmed by the crude exclamation made by Phovoula’s girlfriend.
“Thank fuck you’re here!” Phovos shouted as she raced over to the ship, then impatiently waited for its occupants to exit. Unfortunately, it seemed as though Sini was in a rush to get off the ship, and in doing so, she managed to trip Galyn over as he opened the door for her. Galyn did briefly squishy Phovos, but Phovos was fine. The Pink Paradise had odd an odd gravitational pull, so everyone was lighter than normal.
“Sorry…” Galyn muttered. “Lost balance. The low gravity here always seems to throw me off.”
“It’s fine!” Phovos wasn’t bothered. “Accidents happen. You didn’t hurt me. You’ve probably thought worse thoughts… Uh, Phovoula… what are you doing?”
Before Galyn could apologise again, he found himself being shoved back by a furious, ferocious Voidborn. Phovoula had actually gone full Voidborn mode, her fur having been replaced with black plates of armour and her eyes glowing blue.
“HOW DARE YOU TOUCH MY PERFECT PARTNER?” Phovoula roared.
Galyn blinked in confusion. He wasn’t at all threatened by Phovoula, he was just confused.
“I did not mean to touch her? Why are you so angry right now?”
“YOU HURT HER!”
“I… I already apologised for that. You are being very aggressive right now.”
Phovoula ignored Galyn’s words and summoned a weapon. However, before she could attack Galyn, Galyn immediately summoned some vines and used those to knock the weapon, some sort of double-ended staff, out of her hands. Another vine grabbed Phovoula by the tail. But Galyn didn’t do anything else, he instead let Phovos take over the situation.
“Girl, calm the fuck down.”
“HE-”
“Galyn didn’t mean it. You are making a massive deal out of literally nothing. Take a deep breath, right now.”
“I DO NOT-”
“Pretend to take a deep breath.”
Phovoula hesitated, then did as she was told.
“Now turn yourself back to normal. You aren’t like this.”
Again, Phovoula did as she was told. She looked up at Galyn, muttered an apology, then climbed into the ship and disappeared from view. Galyn wanted to make a comment, but he was distracted by both Sini and the appearance of another Life Goddess.
“Welcome back, Sini. Is everything well?”
Sini’s confused frown turned into a giant smile. “Big brother! You worked out basic shapeshifting! And Phovos, you worked out what kind of Life Goddess you are!”
Elkay-En glanced at himself, then tutted. “No, not at all. I just worked out how to change the colour of my plating. I was making myself pink to give Phovos a quick break.”
“Oh, that reminds me…” Phovos snapped her fingers. Her pink and black fur and pink scales suddenly turned back into their normal dark green tone. “I’m glad I don’t need to be pink any more. But I actually worked out what kind of Life Goddess I am a whole ago.”
Sini continued to smile. “You’re clearly an Allion Wrangler! You deal with Voidborns, Time Drakes and Decay Lords no problem! Can wrap them all around your little finger if you wish.”
“Um… No, I’m not. I’m a Portalic Pocketer. I make pocket dimensions and portals and focus on making rocks and plants more than anything else. I just dip my toes into Allion Wrangling since I’ve been working here at this stupid oasis of yours for the last few evs or whatever.”
Elkay-En was still confused. “What are we talking about?”
“The type of Life Goddesses that we are…” Phovos sighed. “You clearly haven’t had much luck reading that book. It’s literally on page 10.”
“Oh…” Elkay-En frowned. He looked Phovos up and down, then tried to copy her actions to turn his pink plating back to dark green. The first few attempts didn’t work, but he found that rubbing his plating did a far better job. “I suppose, at least I have finally worked out why my plating is black and green. I got the black plating from my mother, I assume the green came from Kinisis, since Phovos is also green. Were you once green, Sini?”
Sini shook her head. “No. When I was, uh, made, I was pure black, and so was Epani. We were intelligent within the first few hours of existence and somewhat picked colours for ourselves. But we were also somewhat given our Life Goddess types from the start. Well, the more generic types of Space Creator and Life Creator. But Epani was always an Asteroid Dancer, took me a bit longer to settle down as a Genetic Experimenter. I was more of a Procreater Pusher at first, just wanted to create as much life as possible before deciding I wanted to try and make something long-lived… I take it, Elkay-En, you haven’t worked this stuff out yet.”
“No, not at all, sadly. I learned how to do my small number of godly things via being partially Corrupted and having Epanophovon in my nervous system. Now I need to relearn how to do everything as a Life Goddess. And it turns out that learning this stuff is hard. I can hardly read that book you gave me.”
Phovos thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Maybe you’re just learning from the wrong people. Sini’s always known what to do, she’s always been a goddess with a vast amount of power, but I started from nothing and kinda worked out my stuff while learning alongside the Thantir, and I got into Life Goddess stuff proper after I became a Decay Lord. Maybe you should come with me back to Savepoint, maybe having people with lower power levels will help spark something. Or, like, maybe you can learn from Arkay, because he has light Life Goddess powers too.”
“I thought… I thought my half-brother was… what did you call him?”
“A Synaisthyn. Or an Amalgam Mimic, if he’s not around and can’t hear you and you forget. But since Kinisis made Arkay into a deity, he’s already been down the same path you have.”
Elkay-En clearly didn’t like that idea. “That means going back to your base. You do know I was a servant of Epanophovon, and the Thantir are purifiers, yes?”
“So? Arkay literally turned himself into a unique strain to damage whatshisface.”
“It’s not Arkay I’m scared of. I’m scared of the Righteous Unender.”
Phovos blinked, surprised by Elkay-En’s statement. “But… But Elkay is… he’s mostly harmless. As long as you don’t try and hurt someone, most notably his husband, Elkay’s absolutely fine. He’s… kinda like a way safer version of Arkay.”
Elkay-En sighed, then relented. “Alright, fine. I’ll come to Savepoint with you. But I don’t want to stay long. I just want to figure out what type of Life Goddess I am, I want to go to this wedding you lot seem to be planning and then I want to come back here, where I feel safe.”
Sini patted Elkay-En on the shoulder. “You go and do that, deary! I’ll be here, waiting for you to return.”
“Hmph. Fine. Let’s get going. The sooner I work things out, the better.”