“You two have no idea how angry I am with you.”
Kinisis paced up and down, each step causing the ground to shudder ever so slightly. Kairos and Stasis kept their eyes on her, trying to ignore the massive amount of construction going on behind them.
“We’re lucky we caught this early. This could have been catastrophic.”
Kairos quickly glanced behind him, then looked back at Kinisis. Hundreds of Veth were working to repair a huge hole in the ground. It looked as if a large, pointy thing had stabbed straight through the soil.
“Normally, you two worth WITH me to prevent these things from happening… I can normally rely on you to be on the lookout for any sort of strange threat and deal with it immediately. Whether it be paradoxes, other universes with malicious intent, or even gigantic pieces of debris that are on a collision course with me.” Kinisis twisted round and pointed at the huge hole. “Or in this case, A FUCKING HUGE LUMP OF INERT CORRUPTION!”
Stasis’s eyes dropped. He stared at his feet, ashamed of himself. Kairos immediately apologised.
“I am sorry Kinisis but…”
“BUT WHAT?” Kinisis quickly lost her temper. “BUT WHAT? THIS COULD HAVE DESTROYED US. WE NEARLY GOT DESTROYED A FEW MONTHS AGO. WE ARE AT RISK AND YOU GO ALONG AND DO SHIT LIKE THIS, CUTTING ME OUT!”
“Sorry…” Stasis and Kairos both muttered.
Kinisis took a deep breath. “Listen. Stasis. Kairos. I love you both. But you can’t do this to me. None of us want to be corrupted. None of us want this universe to be consumed. None of us want anything bad to happen.”
“None of us want to lose all our beloved mortal creations…” Kairos added. “I want them to be happy. But you make them sad.”
The Personification of the Cycle paused. “No… I make them all live normal lives… They have to die eventually…”
“But why do they have to all die so young? The sentient races? They are not happy!” Kairos tried to explain, but his words were failing him. “They are sad, miserable things. So I want to do nice things for them. Make them happy. Then they love us and themselves!”
Kinisis sighed. “I know. You’re right, in a way, Kairos. But we can’t just give everything to them. They need to search for these things themselves. There has to be a sense of discovery and exploration and a sense of them doing things for themselves and for others… But maybe… maybe I haven’t been giving them enough time…”
Stasis finally stopped staring at the floor and looked up at Kairos and Kinisis. “How about we compromise for a bit? We extend the lives of mortals. We leave them alone. For a while. I will leave the Deitics alone as well. We let mortals be mortals and live their lives how they think they should.”
“Like you were supposed to when that previous Corruption attacked!” a small voice interrupted. Kinisis glanced down at the creature. It was Arkay, dusting off his hands. “Luckily that Corruption was a dead one. Just a bit of it, but large and pointy enough that it broke through. I destroyed it and the remains were ejected back out, is that alright, Death?”
Kinisis smiled at her Veth Prime. “That’s fine, Arkay.”
“So we agree, we will leave everyone alone?” Kairos asked.
“Yes, we’ll leave them alone…” Stasis growled.
“Yeah. Leave them alone. I’ll go back to my normal, higher level duties, my Veth will deal with Kinigi and all that. Please, you two, don’t do that again.”
“We won’t…” Kairos smiled weakly as the two great beings turned to leave.
Once they were out of earshot, Arkay tutted loudly. “I doubt they’ll stay like that for long.”
“Probably not,” Kinisis shrugged. “But we all got a bit of a shock. We’re weak right now. There will be more Corruptions coming our way. At least for the next few hundred years.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll deal with it.” Arkay seemed pretty confident.
“Yeah…” Kinisis rubbed her eyes. “Getting you here through Kairos’s time bollocks has exhausted me. I’m going to go lay down for a bit. You can deal with the rest of this, right?”
The Veth Prime grinned. “Don’t you worry, Kinisis. Everything will be fine.”
“I hope so…” Kinisis yawned as she walked off. “I hope so…”