“Ah, you came back!” Death smiled as she poured herself a glass of something fizzy. “I knew you would. Still, glad to see you. Please, sit down!”
Tenuk glanced at the small glass seats that popped out of the ground. “O-of course. Do you have more stories to tell today? Or do you just want to chat?”
Death swallowed her drink on one go, then poured two more, one for her and one for Tenuk. She lazily sat down on her seat, a long trail of shadowy tails wrapping around it. “Ohh no, just little chats today. Say, Tenuk, how old are you currently?”
“I have lost track of my exact age, but I’m definitely closing in on the big One Mil.”
“Mhm!” Death was pouring herself a third drink already. “You’re pretty old! Still young for a smart Deitic though. Most of you folks get yourselves killed pretending to be gods to mortal races, only to end up looking me in the eye. Even the somewhat smart ones manage to mess themselves up. Killing too many mortals and attracting silverbloods or Veth. And when you do reach the end of your insanely long lifespans, what do you all do?”
Tenuk shrugged. “I don’t know, cease to exist?”
“You all try to defy me. Why is that, I wonder? I have never understood, and I understand a lot!” Death started humming to herself. As she did so, her body took a less shadowy form, turning into a horned devilish being, something designed to seduce rather than destroy.
Tenuk pondered to himself. Being a Deitic, he did somewhat know why. “I believe it is our desire to be part of stasis. We want things to be frozen and never change. To defy you is to defy the circular existence that you represent.”
“I like that answer!” Death leaped up unexpectedly, curling herself around Tenuk. Despite who this being was, she felt warm and welcoming. “Say… Do you have any questions for dear old Death? Since you answered her question so nicely?”
Tenuk was certain that she was toying with him more than usual, but Death had just given him a special opportunity.
“Any question?”
“Any question.”
“Hm…” Tenuk scratched his snout. What could he ask? He didn’t want to ask about himself, that would be selfish. But he couldn’t ask too big a question either, could he? How much would she be willing to say? Well, it was worth a shot. “… What happens at the end of this universe?”
Death threw her head back and laughed. But it wasn’t the soft, feminine laugh he’d heard earlier. “Ah, bless you, Tenuk!” She patted the Kronospast on the head playfully.
“Was that too big a question to ask?”
“Oh, no, no, not at all! No question is too big. And I am glad that you know that, eventually, this universe will end and give birth to new ones!”
Tenuk shrugged. “Something to do with unstable sub-atomic particles, yes?”
“Mhm! Not quite sure myself to be honest. It just happens. You see me here as a being. I am not a being. I am a circle. A higher dimension of a circle. Circles never end. Neither do spheres. Neither does space-time or any of the higher spherical dimensions. I do not end.”
“So you stay here forever?” Tenuk asked.
“I break apart. There is a bit of me in every universe. All universes are split from a single, original universe that expanded and broke apart. This universe was still. Nothing happened until it broke apart and formed us. Every new universe has a little bit of me in it, a little bit of Cycle, a little bit of Stasis, a little bit of Time. We split and merge across these universes, and when each one dies, it too splits and we are split further, when two universes merge, we too merge.”
Tenuk clearly didn’t really get it. “You say split, what do you mean?”
Death smiled, that warm yet terrifying smile. “When this universe dies, my children return to me. I become whole again, then send my favourite children out to bring the Cycle to other, newborn universes.”
“You’re favourite children?” Tenuk asked.
“Yes, my little Veth. They are my body, I am their mind. Together we are the Cycle.”
“That…” Tenuk couldn’t even start his sentence, let alone finish it. He was trying to comprehend it all. It was both simple yet astoundingly large. It hurt his mind thinking about it, how small and insignificant he was. Not only was he one singular being in one universe, but he was one being in a huge multiverse. Normally that wouldn’t bother him, Tenuk was aware of the multiverse, but something had made him unnecessarily uneasy. He tried to get up and move away, but Tenuk’s legs wobbled beneath him.
Death watched as the little Kronospast tried to come to terms with the fact that it was speaking to a fragment of something nearly as old as existence itself. The smile on Death’s face remained, but she knew she’d probably said too much to the poor thing. Part of her wondered why she doted on this one, long-lived but still mortal being. It was probably just pity.
“Is there anything else you want to ask, Tenuk?”
“N-no thank you…” Tenuk’s legs stabilised themselves and he got up to leave. “Thank you, Death. That was…”
“Illuminating?”
“Terrifying. But yes, also illuminating.”
Death waved as Tenuk walked off. “Come back soon!”
“Yeah, yeah, sure, see you later…” Tenuk sighed, wondering why he always came here. “Oh yeah,” he thought, “because you can’t say no to Death.”