The Thantir Three was a small ship, not really designed for long distance travel. However, it was perfect for training, not just for piloting but also gun aim as well. That was one of the reasons why Retvik had taken it out for a ride, alongside Tenuk, Phovos, Elksia and Eksi. The reason Retvik had given the Phantai was that he wanted to keep the ship in flyable condition and also wanted to get some flight training done for Elksia and Eksi, neither of whom knew how to fly a ship, but that wasn’t the main reason.
Currently, they were on the very edge of Phantai territories. Close enough to the Shimmering Blade, the Phantai’s flagship, that they could escape any potential danger, but far enough away that they’d be left alone by everyone else. The plan was to work out how to access Kinisis’s spare Life Goddess ship, which Tenuk had been keeping on his key chain, but nothing had worked so far. The Thantir Three was stationary, with the cargo bay doors at the back open and Phovos floating outside the ship, held in place with a heavy rope tied to the ship’s rear doors.
“This is fucking stupid, I don’t know how this works!”
That was the fifth time Phovos had made that statement, and, to her credit, she was correct. In her hands was the miniaturized ship, and it hadn’t changed at all. Phovos had tried prodding and poking the ship, stroking it, trying to press anything that felt like a button, she’d even tried holding it in her hand and angrily demanding that it expand into a full-sized ship. Elksia had also tried to help, by using her time-based powers to look into the mini ship’s past, but she couldn’t see anything, since the ship had been made tiny just before Elksia became a Time Drake. Even Eksi and his weird perception powers had done nothing to help the situation, because no one had seen or known about this ship’s creation apart from Kinisis, who was now dead.
“I’m pretty sure it’s voice-based!” Tenuk shouted from inside the ship. “Like, most of Kinisis’s personal stuff, she controlled it with voice commands!”
“Yeah but that shit only worked for her!” Phovos hissed back. “We had to do everything manually! And I’ve already told the ship to expand, get big, increase in size and all sorts of other stupid synonyms! Ugh, I am such a shit Life Goddess.”
“You’re not a shit Life Goddess!” Eksi’s voice echoed from somewhere. Phovos was somewhat surprised to find Eksi suddenly floating next to her, without a tether. She knew Eksi had telekinesis, incredibly powerful telekinesis, but she still found it somewhat unnerving that Eksi was just floating there. “Seriously, stop beating yourself up.”
“Elksia’s a Time Drake and she’s fine. Elkay is a fucking mimic thingy and he does Life Goddess stuff too.”
Eksi put his arm around Phovos. “Girl, you’re completely wrong about Elkay, he’s barely holding himself together, and he hasn’t worked out Life Goddess stuff at all yet. And Elksia’s cheating, she learned pretty much everything from that old Whenvern bastard and is now mostly just learning to use her powers in different scenarios.”
“Yeah, but still. I just adapt and kill things and have magical healing blood and saliva.”
“You can make small, flowering plants?” Tenuk offered. “Actually, maybe making something near the ship will make it respond?”
Eksi shrugged and Phovos tutted. Eksi attempted to pull Phovos back into the ship, but she refused, blatantly ignoring Eksi’s telekinetic pulls.
“I’m not leaving until I work out how to open up this damn ship!”
“We might be here a while then…” Eksi frowned. “Have we tried any other languages? Like, Kinisis spoke all the languages, maybe she didn’t use our weird omniversal language to make that ship work?”
“Maybe, but I don’t know any Xa Thimiouyalagi and I also kinda don’t know the Theoglossa language Kinisis made up.”
Eksi blinked. “The what now?”
“Xa Thimiouyalagi.”
“What?” Eksi looked completely blank. He glanced at Tenuk, who also looked pretty blank.
“You know, Xa Thimiouyalagi, the language of the Life Goddesses!” Phovos snapped. “It’s like I’m talking gibberish or something.”
“Girl, us non-Life Goddesses literally can’t comprehend the… word, I think you just said?” Eksi went back to shrugging. “You should say that word in front of Elkay and see what he does. But yeah maybe that… thing might be the key to opening it.”
“But I literally just said I don’t know any words from either of the two languages we know Kinisis spoke!” Phovos was getting pretty pissed off now. “Do we know anyone who does?”
A new voice shouted out from the back of Thantir Three.
“Are we making any progress?” Retvik asked.
“Absolutely fucking none!” Phovos snarled. “Retvik, do we know anyone who speaks the languages Kinisis spoke? You know, Xa Thimiouyalagi and Theoglossa?”
Retvik briefly pulled the same blank look that Tenuk and Eksi had pulled, then shook his head to clear his thoughts. “I do not now about… that language, but Arkay does speak Theoglossa. I can ask him for a couple of translations.”
Eksi both shrugged yet again, and watched as Retvik wandered back inside. Admittedly, Retvik hadn’t wanted to leave Elksia alone in the cockpit, and he quickly headed back there to make sure she hadn’t touched anything. To Retvik’s surprise though, he found that not only had Elksia not touched anything, but Phovos had suddenly appeared there too.
“Uh…” Retvik stuttered.
“Sorry, I worked out portal teleporting yesterday…” Phovos frowned, still holding the miniaturized ship.
“You worked out how to teleport?”
“With portals, at a distance of about 50m, yes.”
“Huh. And you were saying you were a bad Life Goddess…” Retvik trailed off, reaching for his communicator. He opened up a familiar app, then typed out a message.
Flamebearer: Hello Arkay, are you busy?
There was a very quick response.
Deathbringer: Yeah, a little, but I’ll always make time for you. What’s up?
Flamebearer: This is not urgent.
Deathbringer: I’m just filling some holes in the side of the universe, a quick conversation won’t hurt. Do you need something?
Flamebearer: If you say so. I need some translation assistance.
Deathbringer: Sure, what language?
Flamebearer: We have a miniaturized version of one of Kinisis’s ships, which Tenuk insists is an actual ship and we want to un-miniaturize it. We believe it requires a spoken phrase but none of us speak the Theoglossa or that weird Life Goddess language. Would you be able to provide a few words that might force the ship to return to its normal size?
Deathbringer: That’s a fucking weird request, but sure. One sec.
Phovos glanced up at Retvik. “Anything?”
“Arkay told me to give him a second…” Retvik frowned. “Elksia, how are you doing?”
Elksia snapped her beak shut, making a loud clicking noise. “I’m bored!”
“I apologise, but this is important.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Retvik checked his communicator. He’d received a new message, with a text file attached.
Deathbringer: Here’s a bunch of random words with how to pronounce them. Get Phovos to do it though because there’s a couple of Xa Thimiouyalagi words there.
Deathbringer: You gotta tell me why you’re doing this though.
Flamebearer: The Crystal Doom have some sort of perimeter around their main HQ that targets and destroys Decay Lord ships, and we are hoping that Kinisis’s Life Goddess ship gets around that.
Deathbringer: Huh.
Deathbringer: Well, good luck with that. Let me know if you need any help.
Flamebearer: Thank you.
Retvik smiled slightly, then opened up the file Arkay had sent him. He glanced at it, understood nothing, then forwarded it to Phovos’s communicator.
“Guess I’ll head back outside then!” Phovos perked up slightly as she created a portal that was slightly too small, crawled through it and disappeared, leaving a small puff of fur from her tail.
Back outside, Eksi and Tenuk were both chatting, having been waiting for Phovos to come back. Feeling much more confident, Phovos reattached her tether, then floated outside again, with both the ship and her communicator in hand.
“Found some words?” Eksi asked.
“Yeah, Arkay translated some for me…” Phovos read through the file, trying to decide what word to try first. Eventually she settled on a rather short word, written in Theoglossa. “You guys should step back.”
Eksi and Tenuk did as they were told. Phovos floated out as far as her tether allowed her to, then pocketed her communicator. She placed the miniaturized ship in the palm of her hand, then uttered the word she had chosen.
“Aneexeh.”
At first, nothing happened. Phovos didn’t expect anything to happen. However, she heard a small clicking noise. After a few seconds, the ship began to increase in size. Phovos let go of the ship and backed off, watching as it swiftly expanded, until it was the same size as the Thantir Three. It then expanded a bit more, so it was larger than the Decay Lord ship, before clicking again and falling silent.
Phovos smiled, but that smile quickly faded. She opened up her communicator and looked for another word, one directly beneath the one she had spoken. She read it in her head a few times, then uttered the new word.
“Kleisteh.”
The ship clicked again, then began to shrink down. It returned to its original, miniaturized size and floated in place.
“Aneexeh.”
Another click. The ship ballooned back up to its larger size. Tenuk floated over, using his stupidly long tail as a tether to keep him attached to the Thantir Three, then made his way over to the door on the side of the ship. Just like he used to back when he was a Divine Guardian, Tenuk tapped a pattern on the blank panel by the door, and the door slid open, revealing the ship’s interior.
Inside, everything was just as Tenuk had remembered it, except that the twelve individual rooms for Kinisis’s former Divine Guardians weren’t present. It was just the main navigation room with its two gunner bays, the main corridor that led to Kinisis’s private chamber and a handful of required rooms like the engine room and tiny cargo bay. Tenuk smiled then headed to the main ship controls, which had seats for three small, Tenuk-sized beings and a throne directly behind them. He immediately initiated the ship start-up sequence, and grinned even more as the ship exploded into life, its engines purring perfectly.
“Ugh, I hate this place…” Phovos muttered from the entrance.
“Yeah, me too, but everything seems to be working!” Tenuk remained cheerful, going through his standard ship checks. It may have been a while since Tenuk had piloted Kinisis’s old ship (or rather, one of them) but everything seemed to come back instantly. A ship diagnostic told Tenuk that everything was in working order, apart from the fact that they had no ammo for the ship’s turrets. Satisfied, Tenuk powered everything down again, then locked the ship up, so that Phovos could shrink the ship back to its miniaturized form.
Phovos eyed Tenuk briefly, then pulled him away and muttered the magic word again.
“Kleisteh.”
Just like before, the ship shrank down, until it fit cleanly in the palm of Phovos’s hand. She handed the ship back to Tenuk, who attached it back to his collection of keys and keyrings. Phovos found it weird that Tenuk had a small tea strainer and a tiny, pink, rubber dildo attached to his keys, but decided not to question it.
“Turns out you’re not a shit Life Goddess after all!” Eksi smiled as Phovos and Tenuk returned to the Thantir Three. “Everything all good?”
Tenuk nodded, grinning. “All good. It’s all coming together now…”