Normally, after his little meetings with Death, Tenuk would go straight home. But today, he didn’t feel like it. He felt like chilling out with his old buddy Arkay. Arkay may have been a Veth, but he was still good company. Unfortunately, as soon as Tenuk found his friend, he realised that maybe now wasn’t the best time. Veth, many of which were not particularly fond of Tenuk, were all over the place, tidying things up.
With a bit of awesome sneakiness, Tenuk slowly sneaked up on Arkay, only to be caught instantly. He’d forgotten that the Veth Prime, the most powerful of the Veth, was almost impossible to sneak up on.
“Hi!”
“Hi…” Arkay was in a bad mood.
“Something’s wrong?” Tenuk immediately asked.
“Kairos and Stasis are popping by, which means we need to amp up security. You shouldn’t be here.”
Despite the fact that Arkay was about half Tenuk’s height, he somehow managed to easily lift Tenuk up and drag him back the way he came.
“Still, I have a use for you.”
“Uh, Arkay, you’re not-ooph!”
Before Tenuk could finish his sentence, Arkay had shoved him into closet and quickly closed the door.
“I’ll let you out later, when it’s safe.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s for your own good.”
The Veth Prime wandered off, leaving Tenuk to his own devices. The closet was small and cramped and, weirdly, filled with skeletons. There was a small vent at just about eye height, looking into what appeared to be Death’s kitchen. He could hear rummaging around as one of the higher up Veth was making tea.
Behind the kitchen area, he could just about see the living room, with one seat being occupied by a large white, blue and silver wyvern. Kairos had arrived on time, as always. There was a reason everyone called him the Dragon God of Time. He was clearly talking to Kinisis and someone else, just out of view. Didn’t matter that he couldn’t see them, Tenuk could pretty much make out what everyone in the room was saying.
“So what happened?”
“What, when we made that sex ta-” Kairos’s sentence was filled by the sound of scales being slapped.
“Not THAT!”
That voice belonged to Kenos. The Lord of Nothing. The God of the Void. The Master of Silence. Stasis. Essentially Tenuk’s great, great grandfather.
“Well what then?”
“When you went to the bar.”
“I go to lots of bars!” Kairos seemed like he was smiling. “I do it once a year! I go to a bar populated by mortals, I have drinks and act as if I am one of them and I have a great time!”
“I am talking about THAT time!” Kinisis sneered. “The time you and Stasis went to the same bar.”
“Oh thaaaaaaat!” Kairos leaned back in his chair and glanced over to the kitchen.
Tenuk panicked that maybe he had been spotted, but he was in fact looking at a Veth bringing in some tea. What made Tenuk panic even more was that there was something by his feet that he couldn’t see. Wires? He didn’t know. There was a small, flashing dot, but there wasn’t enough room for Tenuk to bend down and see what anything was.
“Yes, Kairos. That.”
“I dunno really why you want to talk about this now, just under twenty five years after the fact. Twenty four years and eight of those nice, Thropic months. I mean, it’s not my fault all that happened.”
“Will you just spit it out already?” Kinisis was tutting.
“Oh fine. It was simple. I went on one of my yearly bar trips. Met this lovely mortal who was all upset about their life. We got talking. I bought her a few drinks. Dunno what was in them because I ended up drunk and so did she. We went back to her place, I bought her a nice bunch of flowers, we… cuddled a little, then when she got sleepy, I wrapped her up, locked the door for her and went home.”
“You…” Kinisis seemed surprised. “You didn’t rape her?”
“WHAT?” Kairos spat, leaping out of his chair. “YOU ACCUSE ME OF THAT? I’ll have you know, Kinisis, I hold myself to a higher standard than THAT! I may be small and weak compared to you and Stasis but I DID NOT do anything bad with that mortal, apart from not help her raise her kids. That is my fault, but I thought she’d died in childbirth or something and had other problems I needed to fix.”
“Stasis told me-”
“Stasis is lying! She was a lovely mortal. All I did was listen to her and make her feel better. She asked me. I said yes. Maybe we were both a bit light-headed but that was what SHE wanted. How was I supposed to know that this one being, out of a population of what, five billion on that planet, was the only one capable of bearing children via me?”
Kinisis calmed down a little. “Stasis, why did you say that Kairos raped him?”
“Probably projection!” Kairos growled. “Anything he accuses me of, he has done himself!”
Stasis didn’t say anything.
“Fuck, was I right? Did you… rape her?”
The only person not surprised was Tenuk. He was a Deitic. Stasisborn. He knew first hand that Stasis was a horrible, corrupt monster with no true set of morales. After all, he was the personification of the eternal nothingness that is the vacuum of space. Why would he have a sense of morality?
“Maybe.”
“You did! You must have! Because I was with her until midnight. I slept with her, cuddled with her and then she got tired and wanted to go to sleep so I left.”
“You’re judging me when Kinisis did the same thing six months pri-”
“Are you seriously going to blame me because one of the trillions of beings that exist in my universe raped another one of the trillions of beings?” Kinisis was not in a good mood. She had been fine earlier when Tenuk was with her. “I don’t control them. They are free beings who do what they want.”
“You do horrible things to your Veth though…” Kairos interrupted.
“They don’t count. They’re just extensions of myself.”
“But-”
Someone slammed their fist down. Tenuk didn’t know who it was.
“You know WHY I did it? Because that individual is one in a trillion. A being capable of birthing live, fertile young, no matter the father. You two BOTH would have taken advantage of that, if you had known!”
There was a brief silence, but it was broken by Kairos.
“I wouldn’t, actually.”
“Liar.”
“No seriously! I may not be mortal but I understand them. At least I get it more than you, Stasis. That’s why I do my one-nighters. Normally I don’t end up going home with a mortal, but I treated her with the care and tenderness that any sentient being deserves. They have brief lives. I shouldn’t make their existences worse.”
“You got four stupidly powerful Time Drakes out of it though.”
“Well that was just… luck, I guess.”
“Kinisis has one child with the All-Birther, I have one, you have four.”
“Wait wait wait you really think that I intentionally took him? I would have taken any of them had I not known they were YOUR kids, Stasis and Kairos.”
Another, familiar-sounding voice entered the room.
“Excuse me, I apologize, but may I ask a question?”
“What is it, Veth Prime?” Stasis suddenly sounded rather grumpy and snobbish.
“You’re talking about my mother, aren’t you?”
“You mean that little whore who can give birth to literally anything? Yes.”
A huge, awkward silence filled the room. Tenuk almost considered blowing his cover and coughing to break the tension. Luckily, he didn’t need to, as Stasis had suddenly started panicking, screaming and flailing around, with an incredibly pissed off Veth Prime latched on to his throat. Kairos and Kinisis did nothing to try and help Stasis. They almost seemed too scared to assist him.
Tenuk watched as Stasis continued to flail and cry, then decided that now was a good time to get the hell out of there.