“Welcome back, brother!”
Elkay-En inspected Arkay with quite a lot of hesitation as he stepped off the small ship. He’d just returned from the Pink Paradise, where Elkay-En routinely went to speak to his half-sister (and much more powerful Life Goddess) Sini in the hopes of learning some more Zontantian tricks himself. His fellow passengers, the two Raptors, and Galyn (who had flown the ship for them) had already left and gone off to do their own things, so Elkay-En didn’t really have any real excuse to ignore Arkay or avoid him.
“Uh… Hello… Is something wrong?”
“No, no, nothing’s wrong!” Arkay smiled. “Well, nothing’s wrong with me. Something always seems to be wrong with you though. And I’m pretty sure my next few words will probably annoy you even more.”
Elkay-En immediately knew what Arkay was about to say.
“My trial is coming up, yes?”
“It is, yes! You don’t seem too optimistic about it.”
“Um… well…” Elkay-En stuttered. “Well… it’s… complicated…”
“Are you scared?” Arkay asked as he led Elkay-En to the canteen.
“Uh… no?”
Arkay sat Elkay-En down, then brought him a drink and some crisps and sat down next to him.
“You seem concerned though.”
“Well, of course I am concerned!” Elkay-En hissed, a little too loudly. “You’re going to make me fight something! Something big and scary and unknown?”
“So?”
Arkay’s response caught Elkay-En completely unaware.
“What?”
“So?” Arkay repeated himself. “There are two things you’re likely to fight. Voidborns or Corruption. Whatever you fight, it will have been caught in advance, had its claws trimmed and is probably waiting to be killed because it’s a murderous Voidborn or Corruption. Most likely, from the research I’ve done, you’ll be dealing with Corruption, because there are very few reasons not to kill Corruption. If you find yourselves dealing with a Voidborn, it’ll probably be a violent one, or one that pissed off the Voidborns connected to Deathven in some way and needs to be put down. Either way, you can deal with this no problem.”
Elkay-En continued to frown. Arkay was aware he hadn’t settled Elkay-En’s nerves.
“Brother, seriously, you’ll be fine.”
“Why are you so certain?” Elkay-En snapped. “How do you know?”
“Weeeeeelllll!” Arkay smirked a little. “Firstly, I ain’t a good Time Drake, but I have some time powers. I’d be able to sense if you were in danger, and so would Thassalin and Elksia. Secondly, Deathven has a vested interest in getting Life Goddesses to become Decay Lords. Sure, he doesn’t know that you’re below average in sheer Zontantian power, but that’s still more power than most people have. Physically, socially and politically. The guy would get a lot of shit if you were to get seriously hurt.”
“I guess…” Elkay-En tutted. “Still not convinced though.”
“Of course not. Because you’re fucking hard to convince!”
There was a slight hiss in Arkay’s voice. He nudged everything to one side then leaned forward.
“I’m going to be blunt right now.”
“You are?”
“Yep! Ready?”
“No.”
“Tough. Elkay, brother, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
Elkay-En blinked. “What?”
“Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? What happened to the real Elkay-En?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were this super smart, super powerful, super resourceful Retha. You taught yourself how to read and write, you escaped the Ksa training facilities and forged your own path. You became a captain, a general, a Circle-General, a Vice-General and then the fucking High General of the Retha. You led billions, you fought in-universe corruption in a myriad of forms and assisted in saving the fucking universe in more than one occasion. And when you left the universe? Sure, Epanophovon TRIED to claim you, but you fucking resisted THE most powerful strain of Corruption around and fucking UNCORRUPTED YOURSELF. Fucking NO ONE apart from, like, maybe me, Elkay and a handful of other beings can even consider doing something like that, and you did it with relative ease. When I uncorrupted myself, I was on death’s door, silently begging to die, reliant on my fellow Synaisthyn to show me how to save myself. You though, you worked that shit out ON YOUR OWN! So where the fuck is the Elkay that managed that, and why do you keep on thinking that you’re a weak-ass little bitch when you’re clearly not?”
Elkay-En blinked some more, completely caught off guard by Arkay’s ramble. He didn’t answer at first, mostly thinking about what Arkay had said. But the more he thought about Arkay’s words, he quickly realised that Arkay was right in every way.
“Wow.”
“What?” Arkay tutted.
“You’re right. I really have been acting like a weak-ass bitch.”
“You have, yes. You’re Elkay-En Theanon-Photeianos. You’re the first daughter of Kinisis. You’re the first son of the Mage. You were the High General of the Retha, the High General who brought equality to all Rethans, regardless of their type, the person who freed the Ksa, the person who united other races and talked the Temthans into submission. You beat Epanophovon, you freed yourself, and you’re going to be both a Life Goddess and a Decay Lord, once you’ve done this trial, which won’t bother you in the slightest.”
“You are right in every single way. I’m going to be fine.”
“You are!” Arkay perked up, and was smiling properly now. “You and Veekay will both be fine. And then you’ll both be proper Decay Lords and you’ll get some extra money and you’ll feel better about yourselves and you’ll be fine.”
“Yeah… wait… money?”
“Yeah. You get paid a small salary to be a Decay Lord serving Deathven’s Decay Lord society. But in your case, since you’re a Life Goddess, you’ll get paid a decent amount.”
“Huh…” Elkay-En thought to himself for a moment. “How much does Phovos get?”
“Plenty.”
“And I can do whatever I want with it?”
“Pretty much.”
“You do realise, once I’ve done this trial, I might go back to living at Sini’s place.”
Arkay shrugged. “That’s fine. Then we can claim Sini’s place as an official part of the Thantir’s territory. But I’m also certain that you’ll become more powerful after your trial. I don’t know why, but those trials do SOMETHING to you. Maybe they just make folks more confident.”
“I guess…” Elkay-En relaxed properly. “Well, thank you for kicking me a little. I needed that.”
“No worries, bro!” Arkay smiled back. “Feel free to take a break, but when you have a chance, go chat with Veekay too. You guys need to work on a game plan.”
“Will do!” Elkay-En smiled as he got up. “Speak soon!”