Tale – A Cause for Concern

Continuity hovered around the storage unit, watching as the Veth Prime tried on various bits of armour, none of which he seemed to like. He’d been trying to approach the angry Veth for a while, but after all that had happened recently, Continuity was feeling slightly scared of him. No, more FOR him. Death herself kept on putting the Veth Prime through various trials and torture lately, trying to change him into something else.

“I know you’re there, Continuity. What’s wrong?”

Arkay’s voice made Continuity jump. He hadn’t realised that the Veth Prime was aware of his presence.

“How long did you know I was there?”

“As soon as you arrived and started hovering around, not sure how to speak to me. I’m a Veth like you, Continuity. You should treat me as such.”

“True, but you’re really not like the rest of us. You can go to the mortal plane as you please. You have different duties. Heck, you take a different shape compared to normal Veth.”

“I would look more like you if Kinisis would let me,” Arkay sighed as he threw down a rather bright, steel helmet. “She keeps on locking my form-changing powers. I can’t change my look without Her say so.”

Continuity blinked. “Really? She is stopping you from form-changing? She really has been acting strangely…”

Arkay picked up another helmet, sighed then put it back. “Yeah. Wants me to be a ‘Grim Reaper’ or something like that. I assume Death isn’t like this with you. Or wasn’t like this with other Veth Prime.”

“No…” Continuity trailed off, lost in thought. If what Arkay was saying was true, that was worrying. The whole point of Veth was their ability to adapt so they can do whatever Kinisis needs them to do. If She was limiting Her Veth Prime, maybe something was wrong with Her, rather than Arkay.

Arkay went back to looking through armour. He didn’t really care, he was just looking for something not horrible, and preferably comfortable too. Death had asked him to get himself a nice set of armour for his next few tasks. Which was dumb because he was an unkillable monster who formerly had the ability to shape-shift.

“Arkay…” Continuity started, but never finished his sentence, being lost in thought again. Arkay glanced at the old Veth. He seemed confused and worried. Two things an ancient being such as Continuity shouldn’t have been. It was slightly worrying.

“Yes?” Arkay replied.

“Hmm…” Again, Continuity trailed off.

“You’re worried about something,” Arkay tutted. “Something is wrong with Kinisis. And you don’t know what.”

“To be fair,” Continuity countered, “There is always something wrong with Kinisis. But it seems as though She is falling back to the old times. You see, about a billion years ago, when life first started appearing and becoming complicated, Kinisis wanted to be like Stasis and Kairos, having a direct influence on all the things of the Cycle. Stasis convinced Her that She was more important and didn’t need to do any of that. So Death had always had a rather hands-off approach to existence. It meant that Death could concentrate on Her duties without the influence of mortals. Whenever She drifted away from that idea, things would start to go bad.”

“And you are worried that Death is drifting back into those ways?”

Continuity laughed awkwardly. “Oh no. She’s going back into those ways in full force. A Grim Reaper is a physical being who brings the dead to Kinigi, rather than them finding their way here naturally. While I trust that you will deliver on that regard, it’s what happens afterwards that worries me. That Kinisis might start creating ‘heavens’ and ‘hells’ before She completes each being’s cycle.”

Arkay could understand why Continuity was worried. “That sounds bad. What can we do about it?”

Continuity breathed a long, heavy sigh. “Not much, for now. We need to keep an eye on the souls you bring here, see what happens to them. But… We might need to… stage an intervention…”

“Hah,” Arkay smiled. “That will be fun…”