“You said you’d be home today!”
“I’m sorry, Elksia. Something came up.”
“What thing?”
“Family stuff. I’ll call you when I can.”
Tenuk closed the call on his communicator and turned to face the ten beings who had just teleported him from the space port to where he was now. A large, echoing room, with little to note about it apart from how pure and white the walls were. He’d been conveniently teleported into the centre of the room while familiar faces surrounded him. Tenuk quickly realised where he was. The Throne Room of Lord Avra.
“It has been a while since we last spoke, Tahnahos.”
Tenuk rolled his eyes. To him, it was obvious why he didn’t speak with Lord Avra. The previous time Tenuk had exchanged words with the High Lord of the Kronospasts, he had been sentenced to ten years of torture. The time before that, he’d been sentenced to death.
“You know I have been calling myself Tenuk for about 12 years now, right? And that your last words to me were “I hope you die painfully!”, among other, nastier things?”
Lord Avra clearly knew, and continued to glare at the Kronorethan towering over him. The two of them started to have a bit of a father-and-son staring contest. Luckily, another voice interrupted them both.
“Father, brother, please, this is important and we can’t sit around entertaining your stupid anger issues!” Kohra, a white and blue Kronospast, announced. “Please, Tenuk, return to your normal form and sit down, we need to speak.”
Tenuk smiled weakly at his littlest brother. With both Tenuk and their middle broher, Levak, unable to rule, Kohra had been thrust into the role of, well, pretty much everything.
“I’m sorry, Kohra, but this is my form now…” Tenuk sighed. “Blame your dad over there.”
“We can discuss this later. Please, brother. Sit.”
Tenuk did as he was told, and wandered over to the one spare seat. Of course, being a 3.5m tall Ethran-Type in a seating area made for 1m tall Kronospasts made the whole scenario even more awkward than it needed to be, but Tenuk could tell that Kohra was serious. Once Tenuk was seated, Kohra began to speak.
“The reason we have called you here is because our enemies have managed to get hold of a very, very powerful weapon…”
“Because of the meddling of our Overlord Stasis!” a familiar voice shouted from behind Tenuk.
Tenuk spun around to see who it was. It looked like a green and red Varga with angry eyes and a pair of wings. “Good to see you again, Levak.”
“You too, Tah… Tenuk!” Levak made a seat appear out of thin air and sat down next to his brother. “I warned you all that Stasis would put the Deitics in danger, but did anyone listen? Nope. Of course not. Meanwhile Tenuk and myself have embedded ourselves in the Cycle, and Lady Death will protect us. The rest of you are screwed.”
Lord Avra was clearly furious. “Everyone apart from my children, leave.”
With a flick of his fingers, everyone else disappeared, exactly as he wanted, leaving just him, Kohra, Tenuk and Levak.
“Well that was rude… I mean, they weren’t important anyway, but still…” Kohra muttered under his breath, before attempting to continue. “Levak, you are probably right that Overlord Stasis will destroy us at the end of time, but that is not our concern, currently.”
“Also I haven’t managed to embed myself in the Cycle yet…” Tenuk added.
Levak gave them both an awkward look. “Seriously? Darn. So what IS this about? Because it caught my attention. Stasis must have been involved.”
“He was. He challenged a large number of Theoktons to some sort of stupid thing then decided experimentation was more fun. Am I right, brother?”
Tenuk nodded. “Apparently the key to ending this universe and recreating true immortality is forcing two altered beings to rape one another.”
“How’s the stomach?” Kohra enquired.
“Still sore.”
“Understandable. Anyway, to business, if I may?”
Everyone nodded, and Kohra continued.
“I have recently discovered that one of our enemies, the Temthan empire, have acquired a weapon capable of killing our divine selves. This weapon fell into their hands because of Stasis’s meddling.”
“You mean his Challenge of Stasis?” Tenuk asked.
“Yes. Your friend Arkay Theanon. He remained on Stasis’s little playhouse, where he was picked up by a Temthan Checker Ship heading to a nearby planet. For reasons unknown, rather than killing him and eating him like the monsters do with most stragglers and stowaways, he was adopted by Raptesses and taken into their ranks.”
“So wait!” Tenuk interrupted. “Arkay is alive!”
Kohra sighed “Alive but utterly brainwashed. He may have only been there for a short while, but the poison of the Raptesses is strong and corrosive. If you were to speak to him, call him by name, he would return with a blank stare. Normally we would not threat about Xentresses, but the fact that they finally have a silverblood in their hands makes us worried.”
“So why don’t I just go and save him?” Tenuk exclaimed, both glad and upset that Arkay was alive. “I could so easily just fix the problem myself. You blame it on a rogue faction, all sorted!”
Lord Avra growled, shaking his head. “You do that, you cause a new war between the Kronospasts and the Temthans. The Cycle-worshipping scum-buckets may not be aware of the weapon they have, but they will certainly find out when the son of the Lord of the Kronospasts suddenly swoops in steals their new Xentress!”
“Why don’t I do it?” Levak suggested.
“That is also stupid!” Lord Avra snapped.
“What he means to say is,” Kohra quickly stepped in before things turned nasty, “any move we make towards trying to ‘rescue’ Xentress Arkai will be seen as some sort of Kronospast attack, or, worse, a declaration of war, and they will work out what the little Rethan can do, as they will discover that he is valuable to us, not just them.”
Tenuk slumped in his seat. “I guess. So what do we do in the mean time?”
“There is nothing we can do right now, except wait for them to slip up, perhaps if they decide to attack the Tri-Mazian system, we can easily make our own move…” Kohra sighed, jotting things down.
“In the mean time son, we must ask something of you!” Lord Avra demanded. “As both Deitic and heretic Theokton, I would… like you to re-pledge yourself to the Kronospasts.”
Tenuk blinked a couple of times. “You, uh, want me back by your side, just in case they figure out what Arkay is?”
“Yes!” Lord Avra replied as bluntly as possible. “You may think the Kronospasts are bad, you know full well that the Temthans would destroy any freedom your beloved Rethavok have. If they and the other Maza races rejected us, they WILL reject the Temthans. And the Temthans WILL NOT accept that.”
Tenuk thought about the idea for a moment, while Levak asked a bunch of annoying questions. He didn’t want to be by his father’s side again, he liked not being a Kronospast, but the idea of his littlest best friend being mindlessly used against both him, his friends and his family scared Tenuk.
“I’ll do it, as long as I don’t have to actually DO anything else unrelated to the Temthans. I remain at home with my friends and I refuse to do anything in your service unless it involves Arkay. Fair?”
“That is a fair deal,” Kohra shrugged.
“It will do. I will bring you here tomorrow at noon for your pledge…” Lord Avra sighed as he dismissed his three wayward sons.