“Do you have an appointment?”
“Pardon?”
Tenuk looked confused. In front of him was a Veth sitting at a desk with an appointment book and a pen far too small for its gigantic claws.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Um…” Tenuk shrugged. “I normally come here once a month. Been busy lately though. Why do you ask, is Death busy again?”
The Veth shook its head. “Had a lot of Stasis trouble here lately. I’ll need an ID or something, to prove who you are.”
“Uh… um…” Tenuk was starting to get worried. He didn’t normally carry ID, and what ID would a Veth accept anyway? Actually, that was worth asking. “What ID do you want?”
“A soul.”
“I… I don’t have a soul…”
“So you’re a Deitic?”
Tenuk nodded awkwardly. “I am… But Death invited me!”
The Veth suddenly smiled. “I know who you are, Tenuk. I was just intentionally messing you around. Our Mistress is waiting for you inside.”
“That’s not very nice, you know!” Tenuk tutted. “You had me worried for a moment.”
The Veth waved for Tenuk to enter Death’s chambers, still smiling. Tenuk was not amused, and, as he entered, narrowly avoiding the flying furniture.
“Death, what’s wrong?” the Kronoreth asked cautiously.
Death looked up from whatever it was she was destroying. Immediately, her anger dissipated and she dropped what she was doing.
“Tenuk! Boy, am I happy to see you!”
She rushed over to Tenuk, wanting to give him a hug, then stopped, realising what she was doing. Even just touching her bare skin could kill nearly anything.
“You seem to be in a bad state.”
“It’s fucking Stasis, I tell you. Ever since life started to get sparse… he keeps on coming here, pushing against the walls of Kinigi.”
Tenuk looked around for somewhere to sit down and found nothing, so he decided to remain standing. “Weren’t you expecting that to happen though?”
“Not like this…” Death put her head in her gigantic claws, sniffing. “When everything is supposed to be dead, when I’m supposed to send out children into new universes, when that happens, Stasis can come from me. But no, he’s got to push and push and PUSH!”
Death flung her claws apart, nearly scratching Tenuk. She whimpered a bit then sighed.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Tenuk asked.
“No.”
“Are you keeping me alive for a reason?”
“Yes…” Death started sniffing again. Was she crying? If she was, she was hiding it well. “Tenuk, the reason I have my Veth constantly seal you away is because… Ah… You wouldn’t get it.”
“Try me…” Tenuk sighed. “I get a lot of things. Mostly because you made me be really fucking old by stopping me from ever dying.”
“I can kill you right here, if you want.”
“Do it.”
Tenuk stood there, waiting for Death to strike. He’d been alive for billions upon billions of years, because Death had kept him in stasis. He knew she didn’t want him dead, even when she set him free a million years ago. Death hesitated, before backing down.
“I don’t want to kill you because I want you to be the Stasis of a new universe. I so badly want to make you into a Veth, I really do. But if every universe had a Stasis like the Stasis you’d be, every universe would be perfect…”
Tenuk didn’t know what to say. “I… I didn’t realise you felt like that.”
“I’ve been planning for so long. Watching as the cycle slowed down more and more. It barely moves now, Tenuk. This universe is dying.”
“You said it yourself. Everything dies eventually.”
“Well…”
“Hm? Were you lying to me, Death?”
Death nodded. “I technically won’t die. Stasis will have me in the end, and I’ll be frozen in his icy grip. Not before I’ve sent out my children to make new universes though…”
“And I’ll go with them?”
“One of them, yes. Iatre. You’ll follow Iatre as he becomes Death of his own universe. Well, it’s either him or Retvik and Kayel. They’ve been so loyal to me. And so have you.”
Death created something on which she could sit on. The walls of her chamber were shaking, like someone was pounding on it from the outside. She shuddered, knowing that Stasis was waiting for her.
“Is this the end of our meetings, Death?” Tenuk finally asked.
“No. Of course not. The Historian will still record our older conversations, because she has no fucking idea how to write things in chronological order, and the universe won’t die for a long while yet. We have plenty of time.”
Tenuk smiled. “And plenty of walls to break.”
Death grinned, Tenuk’s joke cheering her up a little. “And that too. It’ll all work out in the end…”