Ahkron smiled to himself as time faded away across this tiny little universe. It was barely a million years old, but its pantheon of deities had been hard at work making a myriad of different mortal species, each one mostly the same but with a different tail and head, and all sorts of religions and wars had popped up between them. Unfortunately though, this universe had also created several negative deities that Ahkron disapproved of, namely a death god, meaning he HAD to put this universe down.
Doing so hadn’t been particularly difficult. The deities here had been made by a Life Goddess who had immediately left them to their own devices. Ahkron always preferred universes like that, they were so much easier to defeat and collect. And this universe had been especially easy to take over, because of the rules these deities had put in place.
Simply put, they’d made it so no one deity could take the powers of another deity, so Ahkron had killed them, one at a time, until there was no one left aside from their god of time. And that god simply couldn’t manage the entire universe on its own. As Ahkron’s golden spears ruptured the time god’s heart, he’d absorbed the deity’s powers, then frozen everything in place. The millions of mortals, the ones that hadn’t tried to fight back, now remained unmoving and unchanging for all eternity.
It didn’t have to be this way. As with every universe Akhron desired to add to his collection, he’d come along and spoken to the deities first. He always asked politely, explaining what he was planning to do, and offered that, if they personally killed their gods of war, death, hunting, knowledge and time, he’d allow some of them to leave the universe as Decayons, universe-less beings that were free to wander the Space Between Universes. He’d even offered a small goddess of love the chance to escape, to live as one of his many wives, destined to live forever maintaining the portable pocket dimension that Ahkron stored his collection in and occasionally called home. If the Life Goddess who made this universe was still present, Ahkron would have also offered her free passage to leave and make another universe. Life Goddesses were powerful entities and snuffing them out would mean Akhron would have less universes to preserve later down the line.
Of course, they’d all refused Ahkron’s offer. They seemed to like their god of knowledge a little too much. Sometimes, rarely, a universe would agree, and Ahkron prided himself in always sticking to his word and allowing agreeable deities to freely leave. This universe though, they barely gave Ahkron the chance to finish, and attacked him pretty much immediately. However, because they had split their strengths across so many individual gods and goddesses, most of them fell with just a couple of golden spears.
Really, Ahkron was almost insulted by how weak these deities were, inside of their own universe where they made the rules. The handful of Decayons he had killed lately had put up more of a fight than these pathetic individuals, and six of those had been Decaylings, essentially children. Perhaps it was for the best that their goddess of love had refused to join him.
With time now frozen across the universe, Ahkron could now begin to transform it, preparing it so it could be added to his collection. He sealed the time god’s body inside one of his deity containment cubes, then travelled back to the edge of the universe, cutting a hole in its side so he could step out of it. Borrowing some power from a god of healing that he had killed, he sewed up the hole, then placed three of his four hands against the walls of the universe. Ahkron closed his eyes and began to concentrate, humming briefly and causing a bright, white flash. He let go and watched as this light penetrated the walls of the universe, before ricochetting inside it, coating the walls with a thick layer of sparkling crystal.
Now that the universe had hardened into a solid mass, Ahkron briefly unfroze time, allowing gravity to become the dominant force. The universe began to perfectly shrink down, until it was about 30cm in diameter. Once again, Ahkron froze time and removed all the forces of the universe from play, permanently sealing it shut.
Satisfied, Ahkron picked up the orb and inspected it. Inside, he could see the various frozen stars and planets, everything coated in a very thin layer of glass, the after-effect of the flashing light and the crystallization of the universe’s walls. The universe was now perfectly preserved, and all the beings inside it would now exist for all eternity.
Holding the orb in his lower hands, Ahkron snapped the fingers in his upper right hand claw, summoning a small device with a single button on it. Tapping the button caused the air around Ahkron to shimmer. After a couple of seconds, he appeared inside the central hub of his ship, an octagonal room which contained eight separate doorways. He chose the door directly behind him, which lead down to his collection room.
As Ahkron walked, he glanced at the glimmering walls, each one decorated with engravings of the multitude of beings he had murdered over the years. The carvings would shift downwards, back towards the central hub, with each new being he killed. Reaching the end, Ahkron looked forward to seeing the new carvings. He had murdered a lot of beings lately, including an elder Decay Lord, something he rarely got the chance to do. Most of the older Decayons knew to keep out of Ahkron’s way and let him work.
However, to his surprise, on the end of the wall just before the entrance to his collection, there were only the engravings of the intra-universal deities he had just finished killing. Not one of the ten beings on that Decayon ship were present on the wall. Neither was the little creature that had teleported Ahkron into a sun in an attempt to kill him, but, to its credit, that was a clever trick, and if it had survived, Ahkron would probably just let it live anyway.
Before Ahkron could deal with the missing images though, he needed to add this universe to his collection. The door opened up, sliding to the left, revealing a room filled with lines and lines of orbs, similar to the one Ahkron was holding. Some were larger or smaller than others, but they all had about the same average size. The end of the room couldn’t be seen, disappearing into the darkness.
With a sigh, Ahkron gently placed his newest prize on the nearest empty pedestal. This one had been a little too easy. He preferred challenges.
Heading back out of the room and sealing the door behind him, Ahkron returned his attention to the wall. Somehow, he had failed to kill those Decayons. Despite him specifically remembering snapping the neck of a Life Goddess and stabbing what looked like an armoured, reptilian child through the leg and leaving them to bleed out.
This ought to have bothered Ahkron, but he quickly found himself not really caring. After all, he could just go back and kill them all later. No, now that he was thinking back to it all, he had recalled a scent that he had picked up on the ship, coming from the Time Drake.
Ahkron grunted, then made his way back to the central hub, then took a left, making his way down to the navigational chamber. The door slid open for him and he wandered in, stomping towards the map table. With a twist of his upper left hand, he pulled the scent-memory from his mind and inspected it. The golden wisp hovered in his hand, then floated down towards the map table, landing on it then fading into the silver digital display. After a few moments, a marker appeared, showing Ahkron a new location.
“Hm. Seems like that Life Goddess was lying. Turns out you are still alive, Kairos, Time Drake of Kinisis… I ought to pay you a visit…”