“Been a while, Tenuk,” Arkay muttered as he made himself some sort of hot drink. Tenuk assumed it was tea, but it smelled of cocoa. Maybe it was a hot chocolate. “Death’s busy, she’ll be down here a bit later.”
Tenuk shrugged and looked around. The main kitchen area of Death’s living quarters had changed. Things were tidier. The kitchen wasn’t stained. The table and chairs were all clean. There were no horrible, off-white splodges on the walls any more. It felt like an actually nice house.
“Do you know when? She did ask to see me about something or other…”
“No idea,” Arkay tutted. “Don’t think she wants to see you any more anyway. Was talking some nonsense about how she just wants to screw things.”
“Oh, okay…” Tenuk decided to sit down anyway. Everything looked like it had all been freshly cleaned, so he might as well have stuck around for a while. “You doing alright, kiddo?”
The Veth Prime rolled his eyes as he poured a second mug of hot chocolate and brought it over, handing it to Tenuk. Arkay then sat down as well, pulling some of his shadowy tendrils to one side so he didn’t sit on them.
“I guess not?”
“It’s a bit hard to feel good about things when you find out Death just arbitrarily kills things, thanks to a random number generator.”
Tenuk didn’t seem as upset as Arkay. Maybe him having been alive for over a thousand years, while Arkay had only been dead for six months, was the reason why.
“Well, we all kinda knew it was random…”
“Yeah but I thought there was some thought into it. Or that Death could be swayed or something. But no, she doesn’t care. Just kills them anyway. I just get to deal with the tough bastards who refuse to die and need a little extra coercion.”
With a shrug, Tenuk took a sip of his drink. It actually tasted of hot chocolate. That made a pleasant change. Normally whenever someone in Kinigi offered him a drink, it just looked and/or smelled like whatever it was supposed to be. And then it would taste like anything but. If he had one tip for other beings visiting Kinigi, it would be to never ask for a glass of milk.
“So you kill Deitics.”
“Not really. Mostly not, to be honest,” Arkay explained. “You’ve got a universe with several trillion sentient beings in it, there’s always going to be a larger than zero number of beings trying to cheat Death in some way or another. It sucks.”
Maybe Arkay had had a bad day or something. He seemed particularly grouchy. “Is something troubling you, little buddy?”
Arkay did more tutting, then downed his drink in one go, slamming the mug on the table. “No. Yes. Lots of things. She’s up there banging Iatre right now. Again. Better him than me. She’s basically screwing a… never mind… Not worth explaining. Not when I’ve got to go out and kill twenty five baby Blood Drakes that some evil cunt decided to test an invulnerability potion on. Thankfully the idiot tested it on himself so I get to kill him too, but Death wants those babies dead before they can grow up and breed and make a family of immortal critters…”
Arkay sighed and headed back into the kitchen to get himself another drink. Tenuk remained where he was, unsure what to say.
“I’m sorry, Tenuk. It’s good to see you.”
Tenuk smiled. “It’s fine, kid. You’re busy. You’ve got a job to do. It’s not a nice job and it upsets you sometimes. I understand.”
“You going to stick around and wait for Death?” Arkay asked as he glugged down a second drink, then washed the mug in a sink and tidily put it back in the cupboard where it belonged. “She might be a while. Like, a few hours at least. I have to go out now, gotta get these jobs done.”
Tenuk got up and followed Arkay to the door. “No, it’s fine. If she really wanted me, she’d just teleport me from my home or something, right?”
“Probably.” Arkay opened the door for Tenuk and led him outside. “I’ll see you soon, I guess?”
“Sure. Have a nice day, Arkay!” Tenuk smiled.
“Hah. You too, Tenuk. You too.”