“What the fuck happened to you, Arkay?” Continuity asked as he held an ice pack to his head.
Arkay rolled his eyes as he limped into the room, trailing behind him a large roll of bandages that was soaking up an even longer trail of glowing blood.
“Bitch decided that she wasn’t happy with me and decided to slice me up with her favourite knife. Are you okay?”
Continuity growled, then rubbed his head and sighed. He was clearly in quite a lot of pain. He wasn’t sliced up and bleeding the way Arkay was, but he was bruised and battered, with large purple bruises all over his brown, white and gold skin.
“No.”
“What did you do?” Arkay sat down next to Continuity and started wrapping his many wounds. Being Veth, the injuries would heal quickly, but that didn’t mean they weren’t in pain. Higher up Veth were just as emotional as normal sentient beings.
“What do you think?” Continuity tutted. “You should see what she did to Istoria.”
Arkay shook his head. “I don’t want to know.”
“She doesn’t want you to know. I tried talking to her. I took her some bandages and towels…”
“Did she even do anything?” Arkay interrupted. “Is Death just attacking anything and anyone or just those who annoy her? If it’s the former, then…”
“I don’t know, kid…” Continuity put his head in his hands, then wiped his eyes. He was tired. He didn’t want to really talk, but this was all getting out of hand. “Things are not right. Not since we fought off that Corruption. She isn’t acting right. I’m certain that we cleared everything out, but… Well… this isn’t normal…” Continuity sighed again. “You picked a shitty time to die.”
Arkay stared at Continuity, looking utterly confused. “I… I didn’t choose to die.”
“I thought you killed yourself?”
Suddenly, Arkay burst out laughing. “Kill myself? I’d finally gotten over that! For the first time in my brief existence, I wasn’t spending my quiet hours trying to figure out the most pleasurable way to off oneself! I’d gotten my life back together. I was genuinely happy. The night I died, I was going on a date and the two of us were going to go chandelier swinging.”
“So you weren’t suicidal?” Continuity ask, just as confused as Arkay was.
“No.”
“Really?”
“Let me get this straight,” Arkay tutted. “I’m more suicidal now that I’m dead than I ever was when I was alive.”
Continuity blinked. “That makes no sense but I somehow completely understand what you mean.”
“What even is the proper term for being a Veth anyway? We’re not alive but we’re not dead either. We’re…”
“Undead? Unalive?”
“I don’t know…”
The two Veth paused as another Veth wandered by. A Veth who was normally on shore duty, not a high-ranking Veth like Continuity and Arkay. The Veth was limping badly. Some of their armour had been ripped off and their left arm was bent backwards. Death had clearly beaten the shit out of them.
“Do you… do you know that Veth?” Arkay whispered.
“No… Not personally…”
“You think he… did anything?”
“No… He’s just one of the shore-workers. Keeps his head down like most Veth. There’s something wrong, something bad around here. I think we need to do something…” Continuity whispered.
“Like what?”
Continuity glanced at Arkay, then sighed. “I don’t know…”