“Ugh. We’re doing this shit again…”
Valksia and Maresia glanced at Syksis, not wanting to agree with what Syksis had just said but doing so anyway.
“Feels like when I was a kid and my parents used to argue…” Aster muttered. “Would happen just as frequently as well.”
“Is that why you’re the god of diplomacy?” Maresia asked.
“No, I’m the god of diplomacy because I managed to convince the rest of my crazy self-exiling tribe to share their secret universe-ending information with everyone else. Except I had to do so with an appeal to a higher power. And now said higher power is arguing with the other higher power.”
“Unhappy childhood then?” Aesop grunted.
“Hah. What childhood? I had about the same amount of childhood as Kohra and Litvir did…”
Aesop grunted some more, then turned his attention to Akusasiiri. “Hmph. You hearing anything, Aku?”
Akusasiiri had been staring at the entrance, her ears twitching for a while. “No.”
“You’re the goddess of sound.”
“They aren’t making any sound, deary. But they are moving. A lot. Growling at each other.”
Aesop didn’t like that answer, so he turned to Nanik, who was also staring at the entrance. But Nanik was also tapping her tiny fingers on the table and was clearly nervous.
“They are very angry.”
Those words didn’t come from Nanik. They came from Litvir. The Twelve Anew all had very weak telepathy so they could communicate with each other, but the rest of them knew that Litvir also had telepathy and could sense thoughts and emotions, almost on the same level Nanik could.
“Too angry.”
What concerned them though was that Litvir had picked up their gun-staff and was holding it tightly. They glanced at Nanik and Elkay, hoping that they’d tell them that things would be alright, but Nanik didn’t answer and, worse, Elkay had summoned a dagger.
The rest of the Twelve Anew were now getting nervous. So Dalosisaar decided to do the thing he hated doing. He peered into the future.
“Alright, shit is definitely going down…”
Syksis picked up her weapon too, a heavy wooden staff embedded with icy spikes. Murum’Va summoned her colossal fire sword, Kohra teleported his electric trident into his hands and Aesop grabbed the massive hammer he kept under the table.
“I… I don’t have a weapon…” Valksia shuddered, eyeing Aesop’s hammer. “Also, that is comically large.”
“Oh, totally!” Aesop smiled, just a little. “But it’s great for smashing in a time god’s toes. Dalosisaar, what’s the plan?”
“As soon as that door opens, move to one side, let Epani pass and then open fire.”
“O-open fire?” Aster stuttered. “We’re not-”
“No.”
Before Dalosisaar could speak further, the colossal doors opened up, but not in a good way. Epani had been thrown through the doors and her back scraped across the table between the Twelve Anew. Kairos appeared within the doorway, but before he could say anything, he was met with a blast of light, a blast of water, a lightning strike and two blasts of fire.
“You dare harm me?” Kairos growled. “You protect the lying harlot over your own god of time?”
Kairos’s question was met with more blasts of energy, however, he shrugged most of that energy off, shielding himself and redirecting the energy behind him.
“Epani is a useless deity. She keeps you all constrained, she keeps the universe finite, she doesn’t truly protect you.”
With a wave of Kairos’s wing, most of the Twelve Anew’s weapons disappeared, but that didn’t deter them, and the Twelve Anew continued their barrage of different energies. Litvir managed to briefly blind Kairos with a laser beam, which allowed Maresia to fire several poisonous needles, all of which connected with Kairos just enough to inject him wit various sedatives.
The sedatives worked. Kairos slowed down enough to lower his shield in order to reposition. But that also gave Dalosisaar an opportunity to try something he had wanted to test for a while.
Kairos flapped his wings, but Dalosisaar mimicked and mirrored his actions. This caused Kairos to very briefly not be able to peer forward into the future, or at least scramble Kairos’s ability to see the next actions of the Twelve Anew.
In under a second, Dalosisaar sent a telepathic message to his fellow deities, and all of them did exactly as he told them to. Nanik blurred Kairos’s thoughts, Litvir blinded Kairos’s eyes, Akusasiiri deafened the Whenvern, Syksis encased Kairos’s wings in ice, Valksia filled Kairos’s proto-lungs with water, Kohra short-circuited parts of the Whenvern’s nervous system and Maresia continued filling Kairos’s blood with toxins and sedatives.
Already though, Kairos was breaking free, by slowing time down and reversing and reflecting the Twelve Anew’s actions.
Realising that the rest of the Twelve Anew wouldn’t be able to complete Dalosisaar’s plan and freeze the Whenvern in place, Aster suddenly lessened gravity in the room, increased gravity around Kairos then slingshot him not just out of the room but out of the entirety of the Castle at the Centre of the Universe, doing so at such a vast speed that the other deities didn’t quite realise what had happened at first.
“Aster, what…” Dalosisaar rubbed his eyes, dispersing the time energies he had used. “What did you do?”
“It… it wasn’t going to work…” Aster whispered.
The rest of the Twelve Anew looked around, still unsure what had just happened. But they didn’t have time to talk, as Epani was busy picking herself up and dusting herself down. The smarter deities all realised that she was surrounded by the same time energies Dalosisaar had flittering around him.
“So, uh, what the fuck was all that about?” Aesop growled, as he picked up the doors that had snapped off their hinges and put them back in place.
“Kairos… as learned a few things… As have I…” Epani sighed. “Secrets we have both kept hidden… Unfortunately, I cannot tell you those secrets. However, one thing I CAN tell you is that Kairos is angry that I have been teaching myself how to maintain time and is making threats. So, unfortunately, Dalosisaar, I have a large request for you.”
“You… want me to teach the others everything I know?”
“Yes. Start with Murum’Va, Valksia and Syksis. As they are older, they will understand better. In the mean time, Aesop, Elkay, I require your assistance on a building project, as I need to create a bunker that is immune to Kairos’s time powers. The rest of you, I need you to do as many patrols along the border as possible.”
“Uh, why?” Kohra asked.
“Because I believe Kairos is trying to sneak something into the universe. However, Aster, I have a… a separate task for you.”
Aster frowned. “Are you going to ask me to talk to Kairos?”
“No. I need you and your gravity powers. I need you to destroy all of Kairos’s palaces. Crush them down into nothingness.”
“Uh…” Aster hesitated. “I can do that… but why? I’m the god of diplomacy first, gravity second.”
Epani growled, deeply and with a hint of pain and sadness. “Unfortunately, the time for diplomacy is over. In harming me, Kairos has forfeited his Motherbound protections and his right to a safe home in this universe, until he submits himself to me once more.”
“And you… you don’t think he will do that?”
“I will allow Kairos to come to his own decisions. Until then, we must prepare, to protect this universe once more…”