“See, told you not all Voidborns are bad!” Vikalos smiled as he joined Galyn and Itaviir in the open-air canteen. Occasionally, their schedules would collide, and the three of them would finish their duties all at the same time.
“Vikalos, my eternal friend, I already know not all Voidborns are bad!” Itaviir tutted, watching as a metallic red Voidborn ship took off and disappeared into the darkness. “After all, apparently I nearly killed that oddly small Voidborn before, and I definitely didn’t act aggressively to them at all, even though they were a former Golden Protector!”
“Also they were only half Voidborn…” Galyn muttered. “The other half being literally Arkay’s sibling. The son of a Golden Protector, a Stolen Prince.”
Vikalos inspected Galyn somewhat. “Dear, you seem upset.”
“I am upset because I feel selfish right now. I felt bad seeing that Vekeus, him discussing with Kaytee about how awful their universe was, and how their Life Goddess made everything a misery for them. And then I realized that I completely fell for that same Life Goddess, and felt bad because she completely messed me up and I am still tormented by what I did under her control. And now I feel bad because I made things all about me.”
“Galyn, darling, you didn’t make things about you. You were just reminded of a traumatic experience!” Vikalos exclaimed as he scooted over, putting an arm around him. “You were manipulated by a horrible being who could literally warp reality and bend existence to her will and pretended to be a good person to dig her claws deeper into you.”
“Still does not change that I feel awful…”
“Well, the awfulness will pass… Shall we discuss something else to make you feel better?”
Galyn grunted, then fell silent. “We can, but everything on my mind makes me feel bad or anxious. Kal have only just set up that special area and it keeps on seeing use. I am concerned that one of them will accidentally get themselves infected. Or that Elkay may get infected. Or one of us will get infected.”
Itaviir thought for a moment, then raised one of his clawed fingers. “That seems like a bit of a silly thought, all things considered. After all, our new duties are to literally cure Corruption infections. If one of us gets infected, we have all the tools right here to fix them. And, now we have the separate area, Kal seem to have calmed down a bit as well, even if they’re working harder than ever.”
Vikalos nodded in agreement. “Kal are insanely happy. They are working towards their own goals.”
“What ARE their goals?” Galyn asked. “Outside of them doing whatever they can to help others, they seem to lack a specific goal to aim for. Ours was to create a safe place for Decaylings to become Decay Lords, with the side goal of exploration. Retvik and Litvir want to make the Thantir a force for good in multiple ways, with the side goal of helping eradicate Corruption in the sector. Kal just want to do purifications and little else.”
“I have not asked them directly, but in my chats with Elkay, he seemed to think that Kal are trying to… quantitatively make up for killing their universe.”
“What, as in, for every person they killed, they save someone’s life?”
Vikalos shrugged. “Something like that.”
“Alright, related question. Why do you constantly have chats with Elkay?”
“You ask that as if it’s a bad thing, Galyn.”
“Um, no, I am just curious!” Galyn protested. “Is it because Arkay was taken away from you after I sent him to you?”
Vikalos frowned. “Yes. In Elkay’s case, prevention is better than cure. The little chats are so we can calm him down before he explodes. But, thankfully, Elkay didn’t go through billions of years of torture, so keeping him stable is a lot easier.”
Itaviir grunted. “Elkay got lucky. Considering what Kinisis did to Galyn? What she did to pretty much everyone? Things could have been a lot worse. Although I really, really hope we do not pick up any… what is Elkay calling himself now?”
“A Synaisthyn.”
“Huh…” Itaviir trailed off for a moment. “But yes, I do not want any more of them around. It is worrying that the Thantir have a plurality of, uh, known Synasthyns in existence. Although that does lead me to another thought: we are lacking in Decaylings now.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Galyn asked.
“Why do you think I think it’s a bad thing?” Itaviir asked back. “Preparing Decaylings used to be our main duty. We either prepared them to be sent to Deathven, we prepared them to be evaluated by the Divine Guardian colleges and the actually nice Life Goddesses that all left this sector or we raised them to Lordhood ourselves.”
Vikalos sighed. “As much as I’d like more Decaylings, I don’t think that’s feasible right now. Those eight were enough of a problem as they were, and apparently Deathven is STILL changing things. I also hoped that three year-strings was enough for the Overlord to calm down and hopefully forget, but no, he is an angry and vengeful being. Even if we HAD a new set of Decaylings to train, I’d want to keep them with us for a lot longer.”
“No one wants to join us either!” Galyn grumbled. “Sure, Retvik in particular has done a lot to clean up our name. We were thought to be extinct. Heck, the Ventra Gales thought I was dead. The Phantai respect us but only because we solved all their problems. We’re still nobodies though. There are barely enough of us to even be legally recognized as a sect.”
“Not even the old Thantir…” Itaviir added. “None of them are coming back. The Ventra and the Metrum died instantly, we just died more slowly, until Deathven finished us off. The Kronothrax said they wanted our help, they used us as bait and cannon fodder and we essentially lost that war anyway. The Golden Protectors survived, they started raiding universes looking for their Stolen Princes so they could start rebuilding their numbers and we couldn’t really do anything to stop them.”
“Still… I would like more Decaylings…”
Galyn and Itaviir glanced at Vikalos.
“Really?”
“Yes, of course. Closest thing I can get to kids.”
Galyn and Itaviir hesitated, then glanced at each other, both of them feeling awkward. Vikalos clearly wasn’t bothered though.
“It’s fine, you two. From what I understand about you silly Beh’ens, most of you never even get to see a female anyway. So the fact that you two studs got to pass on your DNA to the last female Beh’ens is probably a good thing.”
“It was also a lot of fun…” Itavirr admitted. “Being pleasured by five Beh’enas at once was amazing.”
“Is there a way to, uh, see what’s going on with your potential kids?” Vikalos asked. “Because I would genuinely want to meet them. And raise one maybe.”
“We have no way to contact the Beh’ena. We didn’t even know that there were any Beh’ena still alive until we got kidnapped by them!” Galyn exclaimed. “And I… may or may not have fathered a LOT of kids with them… Kids I will have no hand in raising.”
“To be fair, that IS normal!” Itaviir tried to comfort Galyn, before abruptly realizing that, to Galyn, it wasn’t normal. “Oh. I… I forgot that you were mortal once and you had a wife and a kid.”
“Intrauniversal Beh’ens did actually have families, yes. Well, the ones in my universe did.”
“You didn’t even call yourselves Beh’ens, right?”
Galyn nodded. “We called ourselves Titanai. We did have a universe-spanning empire but we also had… Kinisis-like entities ruining everything… Also, I do somewhat agree with Vikalos. Having a kid would be… nice.”
Itaviir hesitated, then glanced around behind him. Everything was shutting down for the day, but most of the other Thantir seemed to be gathering on the beach, where Retvik and Saahro were lighting a large bonfire. Apparently, the younger Thantir wanted to celebrate a holiday from their old universe, and that involved burning things.
“Alright, firstly, new Decaylings are rather unlikely. This sector, heck, most of this pentacluster, it’s all dead. The only universes are on the edge of the Justarian Circle. Unless something catastrophic happens and a bunch of universes suddenly explode into existence and then suddenly die, we don’t have a source any more. And, also, there’s not really… any real chances of kids around here either… Like, most of them are the last of their kind, Teekay and Elkay aren’t compatible species, and Retvik and Litvir certainly aren’t going to put things to one side to have a kid, even if they do clearly love each other.”
Galyn and Vikalos both sighed, then nodded in agreement.
“Still, it doesn’t mean we can’t recruit anyone!” Vikalos tried to put an optimistic spin on things. “Vekeus said he would have considered it if he wasn’t a Voidborn, and that darling Letharus also considered it.”
“Eh, that is being a little too optimistic…” Galyn frowned. “But at least we are happy as we are.”
“We are, yes!” Vikalos smiled. “Also, we should go and see what everyone else is doing. They look like they are having fun.”
Galyn and Itaviir both smiled too.
“Yes, of course!” Galyn cheered up. “Let me just get some beer or something first. I want a drink.”
“Haha, me too…”