It had taken a while for anyone to approach Arkay. He was currently in the middle of putting the west side of the main Dessaron Battle Arena back together, lifting up rubble and removing corpses so they could be buried by the locals. All things considered, it was a miracle that only a hundred and three poor beings died. Considering the impact, it could have been a hundred and five, but two of the survivors were technically immortal and had dug themselves out of the rubble. Luckily, although there were over two hundred wounded, all of them would recover, most of them in about a week.
However, there was a lot that wouldn’t recover for a while. Mostly Arkay’s pride. Five million people had watched Arkay have his arm and wing get cut off. Sure, his little mortal Rethan friend had found Arkay’s arm and he’d reattached it, but that wasn’t the point. Arkay had shown the universe that, well, he was pretty damn weak. That all the gods were weak. The corrupted being known as Kinisis had broken into their universe, torn the Whenvern from the skies, skewered the Panelix, given the Allbirther a concussion and sliced off the arm of the Thantophor. Luckily, throughout most of the battle, what most people had seen, there’d been no sound, so no one save for a handful of mortals had heard the twisted, corrosive words Kinisis had spoken, but as far as Arkay was concerned, the gods had failed to protect their subjects.
The first being to approach was Phovoula Tromeros, known to pretty much everyone as the Raptor, a mortal that Arkay had a handful of ties with. A former warlord, she now ran the Great Dessaron Battle Arenas, and she was rightly pissed off that the biggest of the GDBA’s stadiums was now somewhat ruined.
“So what happened?”
“You saw what happened, Raptor…” Arkay tutted as he began to move piles of concrete to one side, so he could better inspect the damage and work out how to fix it. Really, this sort of architectural work was more Epani’s thing, but she was still unconscious.
“A fucking white, big titted monster thing just destroyed my biggest arena, killed a ton of people, then chopped off your arm and killed the Mighty Goddess of Space and Light? I thought you were deities!”
“To be honest, I’ve never been that good a deity. Either way, I’m sorry, I’m trying to work out how to fix all of this. And Epani’s not dead, just sleeping…” Arkay glanced up from what he was doing. He realized Phovos wasn’t alone, and she had a camera crew with her. “Oh…”
“Oh what?” Phovos snarled. “Care to explain yourself? The universe demands answers, Thantophor.”
Arkay closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was pretty glad that he’d chosen to use the form of a heavily armoured Rethavok today, because this whole sudden interview thing would have been even more awkward if he had been his short, normal, Skyavok-like self.
“I’ll be honest with you, we’re just in the middle of a flair up. Every two and a half thousand years, things from outside the universe try to get in and murder everything, including us gods. The things that want us all dead are called Phthoroi, Corruption in Panlex. Unfortunately, we… kinda got unlucky and were attacked by a completely new, incredibly aggressive corruption which we haven’t seen before, and it got a little too close for comfort, made worse by the fact that, well, it happened to attack where mortals just happened to be looking. All I can really do is say sorry and do my best to not let this happen again.”
The two beings behind Phovos who were holding cameras shuffled anxiously. One was a Ksithan, the other was a Skyavok. They were clearly both slightly scared of Arkay.
“I won’t hurt you…” Arkay frowned. “And I really am sorry. It’s a wrong place, wrong time sort of thing. That… Corruption, it wanted to kill me and Epani and then infect Kairos and Sini and take over the whole universe, infesting everything from mortals to planets and stars. And it kinda wanted to do so here, out in the open, in a bid to prove that, somehow, it was better than us. Despite it wanting to destroy us all…” The Thantophor trailed off, then went back to work, moving rubble and sealing off broken pipes and cables.
“So what did the Corruption say to you?” Phovos interrupted. She was demanding answers, and was probably the only person both close enough and brave enough to actually get them. “We don’t have audio but we all saw you all talking to it. And why did it come here to attack you all?”
The Thantophor’s shoulders dropped. “It said a lot of things. And it came here because Sini and Epani were up in the Gold Suite, watching the match. I was halfway across the universe, at the southern border, when Kairos crash-landed here!”
“It still spoke, it still said something. And you said it’s like a virus, should we be worried? In fact, we have a LOT of questions, Thantophor. Did we really all just see all four of our deities? Where did the Corruption come from? Are the other gods injured? Is the universe safe? What about my Dessaron team, where are they?”
Arkay closed his eyes and growled. The ground shook briefly. “Why are you asking me all these questions?”
“Something horrible just happened, Arkay. The denizens of our universe demand answers. Plus, you, the literal god of death, are still here. Who else am I going to ask?”
“Well, Phovoula, maybe you should be a little nicer about these things? Can you not see that I’m fucking busy, trying to fix this mess?” Arkay paused, then sighed again. “Fine. No, you don’t need to be worried, I vaporized the Corruption and it’s no longer infectious. Yes, you did just see all four of us. The Corruption came from outside this universe. Yes, we were all injured, I just reattached my damn arm like ten minutes ago. The universe is safe now that Kinisis is-”
“Kinisis?” Phovos interrupted yet again.
“The specific strain of Corruption that attacked us was called Kinisis, yes…” Arkay tutted. “As for Xeno Dessaron One, I sent our little friends home, because they literally saved the universe and need time to recover and collect their thoughts. You guys had better build a massive statue of them or something, or find some other way to reward them, because they deserve it. I need to work out how to reward our little team of heroes as well…”
Again, Arkay sighed and trailed off, going back to work once more.
“Hey, uh, mister Thantophor?” the Skyavok camera operator whispered awkwardly. “Can I… ask a question?”
“Yeah sure…”
“Are you alright?”
Arkay stopped what he was doing and turned to the Skyan. With a snap of his fingers, the cameras all shut off, as did all the remaining lights in the arena. The Thantophor wondered to himself why he hadn’t done that earlier, rather than having to endure all this questioning, but knew that, deep down, Phovos was right, the universe did need to know what happened. However, they didn’t need to know how Arkay was feeling right now.
“No. I’m not alright. I didn’t get here fast enough, and I didn’t warn Epani in time. Yet again, most of the blame here falls on me. That’s just how things are when you’re a death god…”
With one final sigh, Arkay glanced around the arena.
“I need to go. I’ll come back and fix this tomorrow. I’m sorry for letting everyone down…”
The Thantophor closed his eyes, then disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving Phovos and her two assistants in a now empty arena.