“So, like you faced the Ancient Collector and didn’t die, Shattershield?”
Akah was beginning to regret his codename. Being a Decayling, he technically wasn’t allowed to pick his own name, it had to be done by a Decay Lord. But the problem was that, when it came to giving him a codename, he was on a ship filled with six small, mechanical, not very imaginative Decay Lords, and they’d basically given him a list of ten names and told him to choose the one he hated the least. Eight out of ten of those names were related to or a pun about the word ‘ice’, Akah’s elemental specialisation, so he’d been forced between Sharpscythe and Shattershield, both tied to his signature weapons. He’d ended up choosing Shattershield mostly because, over the decades, he’d gone through a lot of weapons, but he’d always stuck to his trusty shield.
At least Shattershield was tolerable. Tahvra was just as unimaginative as Kal were, and he ended up picking the name Toxicclaw to go alongside his newfound abilities to create all sorts of poisons and sedatives. Despite the fact that Tahvra mostly created said poisons and sedatives via his saliva and fangs.
“Yes, you could say that…”
With a sigh, Akah glanced up at the Decay Lord that was talking to him. Moonblade was, admittedly, just trying to be nice, and he’d mostly been the main point of contact between the Thantir Decaylings and the Phantai proper. Right now though, they were in the middle of what the head Decay Lord Measureblade called “stress testing” and, currently, Akah was technically on fire. Or he would have been if he wasn’t generating vast amounts of ice in a bid to stop himself from melting.
“So how did you do it? Is it because you are a Voidborn yourself?”
Moonblade was more of a distraction than anything else, and he was currently protected from the furnace by a heavy glass screen.
“How many times do I have to tell you all that I’m not a bloody Voidborn!” Akah couldn’t help but shout. He was hot and stressed and angry and absolutely sick of this stupid test. He would have thrown his shield and/or scythe against the glass in order to break it, but he didn’t have them at hand, so instead he summoned an icy spear and threw that instead. Of course, it did nothing, the ambient temperature in the room Akah was in was about 470K, but it made Akah ever so slightly better.
Well, until he couldn’t take it any more. The heat in the room abruptly spiked and Akah swore his armour was beginning to melt. Thankfully, Moonblade quickly shut everything off, and Akah formed a cocoon of ice around himself to cool down and heal up.
The brief respite didn’t last long though, as Moonblade knocked on the cocoon. Akah unfroze himself and tutted.
“What?”
“That was impressive, mate. You Thantir are pretty neat. So how DID you survive the Ancient Collector?”
Moonblade seemed happy. He also wasn’t quite as large as the other Phantai, so he only towered somewhat over Akah.
“I’ll be honest, he didn’t really even acknowledge my presence until I stopped him from smashing Koh to pieces, and tore off two of his limbs. Didn’t do much, Akhron just regrew them, and we only escaped because Tah teleported him into a sun.”
Moonblade blinked. Or at least Akah assumed he did, he couldn’t really tell, since Moonblade had translucent plastic lenses covering his eyes.
“Who are Tah and Koh?”
“Uh, Shieldamp and Sonicshock.”
“Who?”
“Spiritpurgers 1 and 2. But they have individual codenames now.”
Moonblade grunted, then led Akah out of the chamber. Outside, most of his fellow Decaylings were waiting for him, all as hot and sweaty as Akah was. To Akah’s left, Phovos was just exiting a heat testing bunker thingy of her own, except she was completely naked, her mane and fur were gone, replaced with heavy scales and she had grown Panthreanic plating to cover herself up.
“Are you alright, Phovos?” Akah asked.
“Yeah. You lasted pretty long, considering you’re an ice-type and fire is super-effective against you!” Phovos smiled a little. Luckily Eksi had brought a bed sheet along, since it turned out the leather armour Phovos had been wearing didn’t survive the furnace. “You all seen Elkay?”
“Unender is still doing his test…” Moonblade tutted.
“But… Elkay went in first…”
Moonblade perked up a little as Measureblade approached. “Yep. Unender is an unusual one. He, Flamebearer and Souldrainer all look like juvenile Beh’evok and seem to be just as strong. Soulsoother and Shocktrooper just seem to be the same species as the League of Loops, but the rest of you, you do not really match. Especially the little Voidborn lookalike here.”
Akah closed his eyes and took a deep breath, counting to ten in his head. He’d lost count of the number of times someone had called him a Voidborn lately.
“I am not a Voidborn. I know I am wrapped up in armour, wear a mask over my face and have a shape similar to a Voidborn, but I am also an organic being, where most Voidborns are hollow shells. What can I do to prove to you all that I am not a bloody Voidborn, since ripping the arms off one clearly isn’t enough?”
Measureblade looked Akah up and down and laughed. “You are fleshy?”
“Underneath my plasti-rubber skin, yes. Us Lanex are just as natural as Rethavok and Skyavok are, we just add a metallic coat to our skin and plating when we become adults and no longer shed our armour any more.”
“So you can reproduce?” Measureblade asked, his tone suddenly going rather serious. “Tell me how your species reproduces. Because if you say that you reproduce via a system similar to Kenic Spores, I will slice your head off right now.”
Akah stepped back, definitely feeling threatened, but both Elksia and Phovos leaped to his defence.
“Hey, it’s not Akah’s fault that our Life Goddess had a cruel sense of humour and made an entire race that looked like her asshole Voidborn husband!” Elksia hissed, extending one of her arm blades.
Measureblade though was unmoved. In all honesty, Elksia was just as confusing a creature as everyone else present. She had arm blades similar to many of the Beh’evok, not to mention the similar natural armour plating. But she had a beak, and was also blatantly female, while female Beh’evok were tiny, unarmoured things that were also vanishingly rare these days.
“He looks like a Voidborn and acts somewhat similarly to one. The burden of proof is on Shattershield.”
“You are asking him to prove a negative!”
“If Shattershield explains how his species reproduces-”
“Reproduced…” Akah sighed. “The Lanex are extinct. The same way the Vrekans, the Vohra, the Ksifans and the Kronospasts are. And the Rethavok and the Skyavok are borderline extinct as well. Alright, fine, I’ll explain. But it’s pretty fucked up.”
Tenuk suddenly raised his hand. “Uh, it’s really not that bad. Sucks for the males, because snapping your dick off inside the female to reproduce is pretty horrible, but the lost dick grows back and it’s otherwise kinda just your standard sexual intercourse, same way you Beh’evok or whatever you’re called have sex.”
Measureblade and Moonblade both stared at Tenuk, silently demanding how the weird four-eyed creature knew all of this and also somewhat disturbed by the idea of one’s penis being snapped off. Tenuk though just shrugged.
“I’m a shapeshifter and a whore. If you’re gonna shapeshift, you gotta get the plumbing right.”
The entire conversation was interrupted by the shattering of glass. In the third and final heat testing chamber, Elkay had punched his way out, and was now standing nonchalantly in the pile of glass shards, patting the plating on his lower arm that had caught fire.
“Uh, Unender, you ended your own trial?” Measureblade asked.
“I apologise, I was bored and on fire and none of you were around to check on me.”
Measureblade grunted, but he wasn’t too angry. If anything, he was rather impressed with how unbothered Unender seemed, doubly so since he had survived temperatures of nearly 800K. Elkay made his way over to his fellow Decaylings, but hesitated slightly, realizing he was slightly different. He shook off those feelings and spoke to the others.
“Are you all alright?”
“We’re fine, dear! You were in that thing for ages!” Teekay beamed. Elksia patted Elkay on the shoulder, while Akah summoned some tiny snow clouds to cool everyone off. However, Measureblade approached all of them, tutting.
“While I am impressed with your endurance, we are yet to test you in combat. Luckily for you all, the Great Blades have picked up a small incursion, to which we will be sending a team to deal with. Unender, Threadwarper, Shattershield, you will accompany Lightblade’s team in person. We will hopefully catch some live ones for the rest of you to be tested with. Understood?”
The Decaylings all nodded.
“Alright, you three, come with me. Moonblade, take the rest of them back to their quarters.”
Measureblade marched off, taking Elkay, Elksia and Akah with him. Moonblade though paused for a moment.
“Uh, Lifetaker, do you, uh, need some clothes or something?”
Phovos nodded, wrapping her bed sheet tighter around herself. “Yeah. I kinda don’t have much clean armour left. And unlike Tenuk, I can’t shapeshift clothes onto myself.”
Moonblade snorted. “Alright. Measureblade is a bit of a stubborn git, so how about we take you all to the armoury, then get you some lunch before I take you back to your quarters? Because all these endurance tests are pretty stressful…”