Kairos gasped for breath as he slowed down, bracing himself for impact on the remains of a large moon. He had been chasing Arkadin for hours as the Thantophor had torn his way through multiple solar systems. Everything he had thrown at the Death Lord so far had failed miserably, barely making Arkadin blink. Right now though, Kairos needed to stop, breathe a little and work out a new plan.
Out of all of Kairos’s little plans, only one had made Arkadin flinch. The time chains that had slowed down his flight between planets. The Thantophor was basically destroying cities, continents then moons one at a time, but now he was beginning to pick up speed. Planets were starting to burn and collapse. Stars were beginning to die. If Kairos could get Arkadin to travel slower, mortals would have more time to evacuate and fight back, and it would take longer between planetary deaths.
Speaking of slowing down, the Thantophor had slowed down as well. Not for any good reason though. He had picked out a new target.
Kairos paused. He wasn’t Arkadin anymore. He was Arkedetelos. The Devourer. The kind soul that was once Arkadin was dead, as far as everyone else was concerned.
But either way, Arkadin… Arkedetelos was about to kill something else. An inhabited planet. A small planet with primitive life on it but an inhabited planet nonetheless.
Slingshotting himself around the moon, Kairos chased after Arkedetelos, soaring ahead of him and trying to block his path. He summoned several time chains, aiming them around the Death Lord. The chains tightened, causing them both to suddenly slow down.
“ARKADIN, STOP!”
The Thantophor though simply roared, then pulled on the chains, dragging Kairos with him. There was a horrible blankness in his eyes, as if there was nothing behind them.
“Arkadin, please! You’re in there somewhere!”
There was no response. Again. Arkedetelos threw Kairos into the planet’s surface, scraping mountains across the Whenvern’s back. A jagged volcanic plane cut deeper, glass shards catching on his scales.
“ARKADIN!”
Kairos snapped the chains, freeing himself, then cast them towards Arkedetelos again, this time catching him by the neck. Arkedetelos screeched and clawed at the ground, resisting Kairos’s cries and pulls as the Whenvern attempted to drag him away from the planet.
“You’re making everything worse! Do you even understand what I’m saying?”
The Thantophor’s continued roars suggested that he didn’t understand Kairos. He had blankly ignored everything Kairos had said. And yet again, he managed to drag Kairos into the planet’s gravitational pull. This time though, he threw Kairos into an ocean, causing a massive tsunami which almost instantly wiped out most of the life on the southern hemisphere. Not quite comprehending what he had done, Arkedetelos then scraped his claws against the coastline, causing a series of huge earthquakes, almost ripping the planet down to its core.
“Arkadin…” Kairos tried to shout as he coughed up acidic water. “Why won’t you listen?”
The Thantophor continued to not listen as he sank his teeth into the planet’s core, consuming the spinning iron mass. As he did so, the planet began to crack and shatter as its magnetic fields were torn away and its orbit began to destabilize. Anything that had survived the earthquakes and tsunamis were almost certainly dead now.
Knowing there was nothing he could do to save this planet, Kairos backed off, not wanting to be maimed himself. He was already in pain, with volcanic shards still digging into his back. Arkedetelos seemed to hesitate briefly, as if he had just finished a meal, then began looking around for his next target. With a flap of his blackened wings, Arkedetelos lifted himself up off the shards of the dead planet and headed towards the next star.
Suddenly, Kairos realised where the Thantophor was going. He may have been going from star to star, taking the path of least resistance, but Kairos knew what stars and planets were ahead, and many of them had intelligent life on them.
“ARKADIN, NO, DON’T GO THAT WAY!” Kairos screamed as he charged after Arkedetelos. “You’ll never forgive yourself!”