They’d walked for about twenty minutes, yet the sun still hadn’t set. The little creature happily bounced around ahead of them, leading them away from the demolished space port and towards the outskirts of the city. As they reached the edge of the destruction, they started to see signs of life. Beings of all shapes and sizes, from Vohra and Bayvak to towering Banikans and Ethran-type Rethavok, all frozen in place as they tried to tend to the injured and dead. Statues of life, frozen in time.
“This is creepy as fuck…” Kindyna muttered as she poked a Thanatian.
“I wouldn’t recommend touching them…” Arksi tutted. “You might end up frozen too.”
Kindyna panicked then quickened her pace, occasionally checking her fingers to see that they still worked.
Suddenly, the creature stopped in its tracks, turned ninety degrees and sprinted off, only to come back with a bag of crisps in its mouth. It thrust the bag into Verlais’s hands, poked Verlais in the stomach and continued back on its path.
“Was my stomach rumbling that loudly?” Verlais asked as everyone walked past him. He caught up to them and opened the bag, only for Kindyna to steal a handful of crisps and crunch on them loudly.
“Yes,” Ct’Era admitted. “But I cannot eat crisps. Strict carnivor-”
Once again, the creature disappeared, only to return with food. This time, a large piece of what looked like aggelad steak.
Finally, after much more walking and two other stops for food, the five beings arrived at what looked like a hole in the fabric of space and time. Its appearance was that of a tear in fabric, about ten metres high and four metes wide, but the inside of the tear glowed an abnormal, warm glow, a pink, flooded terrain in the distance.
The creature walked up to the portal, then paused and spun round, holding its hands up as if to suggest that they wait there. It jumped inside the tear, moved around a little then turned back to face them.
“Alright, you can come in!” the creature suddenly spoke.
“YOU CAN TALK?” all four beings exclaimed at once.
The creature sighed. “I can now. There’s something about being out there that stops me from talking.”
“Are you really Arkay?” Arksi asked.
“Yep! Where the fuck have you been, brother? You disappeared, then everything went to shit!”
Ct’Era walked straight past Arkay and into the long, pink grass, utterly mesmerised by its beauty. Verlais seemed equally amazed, and repeatedly ran his claws through the grass to see if it was real.
“What… what is this place?” Kindyna finally stuttered.
Arkay shrugged and started walking, with Arksi in tow. Arksi had a lot of questions that needed answering.
“What happened, Arkay?”
“To be honest, I don’t really remember…” Arkay admitted as he quickened his pace. “You four disappeared from that office, I ended up with some sort of concussion that made me forget a load of stuff, then there were explosions in a bunch of major cities, then things just started freezing. Like, time stops randomly, in random places. Just random. And things happened to random people as well.”
“Like you? What happened to you?”
“Again, I don’t know. Just woke up like this, all spiney, tore the furniture apart, ran off, woke up here…”
“But what the fuck is this place?” Kindyna suddenly snapped out of her trance-like state. “It’s… amazing. Beautiful. Perfect!”
Arkay fell silent and started to walk even faster. In the distance was a large, mushroom-like dome, surrounded by creatures that all looked mutated the same way Arkay had been, but far, far larger. One of them, black and green, growled alarmingly, only for Arkay to growl back. The larger creature stepped down and moved aside to let them pass.
A hole opened up in the side of the dome, and Arkay came to a halt.
“Go in.”
“You’re not coming with us?” Arksi worried.
“No.”
“Is this some sort of trap, you little Rethan?” Verlais sneered. “You lured us all this far…”
“I swear to you, this is not a trap. I can’t follow you in there.”
“Why though?”
Arkay shrugged. “I don’t know. Everyone who wasn’t frozen ended up like me. Except you four. And she wants to see you all in person.”
“She?” Arksi began to get frustrated. None of his questions were being answered. Arkay picked up on their frustration and tried to explain.
“I know, I know, I haven’t told you anything, because I don’t know what to say. She though, she knows. She has answers.”
“Very well,” Arksi sighed, as everyone else walked in. “I’ll see you later, I guess.”
…
The hole sealed itself shut behind them, and the four beings found themselves lost in the darkness. There was no sense of direction, no sense of anything.
“Hey, Arksi?” Verlais tutted.
“What?”
“I think your brother tricked us.”
“He didn’t!”
The four beings froze in their tracks. There was something in the room with them, talking at them.
“Trust me, that little thing is as honest as my Veth come. But there’s no need to talk about them, I want to talk about you!”
“Who are you?” Kindyna interrupted. “Are you…”
“Death? Yes! Yes I am! I mean, everyone calls me Death, I prefer it over Kinisis, but yes, I’m the personification of the Eternal Cycle! I make sure that the whole universe continues in its own little systems, from the birth of life to its end! Microbes, stars, dogs, Banikans, Thropes, Vohra, everything is a part of my beloved Cycle.
“Apart from you four. I mean, I birthed you. You came from the cycle like eeeeeeeverything else! But…”
Death’s voice was high pitched and far more feminine than any of them expected.
“Well… you’re not mine right now! Oooh, I’m just trying to find the right word! Aha! Displaced! You’re displaced! Not from here, but sent forward into the future! Ah, crafty!”
“Um, excuse me, Miss Death…” Verlais stammered, just as Death started talking again.
“It’s just Death! No miss or anything like that! I am a strong, independent six dimensional entity! Or am I made of seven dimensions? Who knows? Pretty sure it’s six though. You tend to lose count. Oh, might be five. Depends on how you define the fifth, whether it’s the reversal of the fourth dimension, or whether it’s based off connected timelines or includes parallels as well. So confusing! What was I talking about?”
“You were talking about us?” Ct’Era helpfully answered.
“Ah yes!” Death’s voice seemed to get less shrill, but only for a moment. It was as if this powerful being was simply an energetic child. “You four! You’re all, like magic. No, not magic. Time magic. Whengic. Pretty sure Kairos set you three up. He doesn’t normally do future shit but he must have seen you in advance or something.
“Wait, you don’t know who Kairos is! He’s like, I dunno. A partner? A husband? No, not at all. A friend. That’s it. Officially, he’s the Whenvern. The Time Dragon. The Kronowyrm. Silly names. But us personifications, we’re odd like that. Dunno what Kairos saw in you. Was probably just chance.
“But you’re here now! I haven’t told you anything. So now I am! You see, I haven’t heard from Kairos for about six months now. I think. It’s hard to tell. Why? Because there’s no time! Bits of space are no longer seeing their fourth dimension! So you get these weird frozen beings who aren’t doing anything at all. You probably saw some of them when the kid brought you here.”
The four beings all seemed dumbfounded None of them really got what Death was talking about.
“Perhaps you can… clarify a little?” Kindyna suggested.
Death’s voice faded for a moment. “Hm. I guess that would be useful for you four. Can I call you Dessaron? That’s essentially what you are. Dessaron made by Kairos, rather than being made by me. Even more painful to the machinations of Stasis. Stasis hates anything that moves. He hates time. Always tries to stop it.
“Guess he managed to do something bad this time… OH! Maybe he captured Kairos! Or is capturing parts of him! That makes more sense, since time only seems to be stopping in bits. I should probably tell you lot what to do then. There’s going to be a lot of new Kairos-based Dessaron in a bit…”
“That would be really helpful, Death!” Arksi did his best to put on a brave face and sound happy. None of them wanted to get on Death’s bad side.
“That would, wouldn’t it?” Death giggled. “Well, I dunno. I can’t find Kairos myself. I’d like to but I’m, like, partially affected by time myself. It pulls on me. I don’t want to spin out of my cycle and it really strains my connection to my Veth. They just go dumb when they leave my home! But what I CAN give you are some numbers. A zero… and a zero! Coordinates, I assume. The poles are always where Stasis likes to go, because he likes the weird non-movement stuff. I’m assuming that Kairos has got himself in trouble and Stasis has captured him and needs you kids to save him.”
Arksi glanced at where he assumed his friends were, assuming that they were just as confused as he was.
“Are you suggesting that we need to rescue Kairos and fight Stasis?” Kindyna asked after an awkwardly long silence.
“Oh, no! Shouldn’t have to fight Stasis, and you’re just rescuing a part of Kairos. You’ll probably have to fight a ton of Deitics, but really, they’re the only thing between you and Kairos. Really the only things moving will be my Veth, Stasis’s minions and you four… So, pretty simple really. You four go and free Kairos and everything goes back to normal. Got it?”
“Not really.”
“Cool!”
Something clapped, and before they knew it, the four beings were standing in the middle of a frozen city, as a large tear closed up behind them.
“Welp, we’re fucked…” Verlais growled as he wandered off, looking for something to eat.