“You’re still thinking about him, aren’t you?”
Retvik nodded solemnly as Phovos entered his personal quarters, bringing with her two small bottles of water.
“It’s not healthy for you.”
Phovos perched on the edge of Retvik’s bed and handed him a bottle,
“I know, I know. But it bothers me.”
“You don’t even know if it was even him!” Tenuk exclaimed as he pranced down the hallway, peering briefly into Retvik’s room.
“Of course it was him. Who else could it be?”
Phovos placed her hand on Retvik’s side. “We really don’t have a genuine way of knowing. It has been a while since any of us last saw him.”
Retvik sat up, tutting, as Tenuk pranced backwards and repeated what he had just said. “You don’t know, you don’t know!”
“I understand that I cannot be certain,” Retvik grumbled. “That does not mean that I can feel pity for the young Decayon working in a phone booth as tech support. It is not a fun job at all. Even if he did seem cheerful, tech support has always been a miserable duty.”
“You can say that again!”
Retvik sighed some more, mostly because he had come to his room to lay down for a bit, and now everyone was in his room talking at him.
“You’ve worked in a call centre?” Phovos asked the highly excitable Elksi.
“Yep. When I was a teen. Was not fun at all! Vok get shouty when their stuff breaks. Would be sad about Arkay too. But I don’t think it was him.”
“Why not?”
“Arkay isn’t very social. Not a fan of talking. Would be the very last job he would do. My guess is this: someone else similar to Arkay. There are many gods around here.”
Tenuk leaned against the door. “That’s what I’ve been trying to say! There’s no way Arkay would be willingly doing that job. I think he would rather clean sewers than having to talk to random folks and their problems all day long.”
Phovos and Elksi both nodded in agreement. Retvik shrugged, realizing that they had all made good points.
“I guess you are all right. After all, I did once run into someone who shared the same name as me. The space between universes can be both amazingly huge and oddly small at the same time. But still, that voice did haunt me somewhat. Especially as we had to send Arkay away.”
“Why did you do that though?” Elksi asked, looking quite puzzled.
“He murdered a Life Goddess and an army of Voidborn beings, then threatened to kill us while lost in his own anger and pain.”
“But I thought you said the Life Goddess came back!” Elksi’s confusion was quite strong. “Wasn’t she like, really pushy? Or something?”
“She reformed herself, yes.”
“And he killed Voidborns too?”
Retvik nodded some more. “He did.”
“But who gives a shit about Voidborns?” Tenuk interrupted. “You were under attack or something!”
Retvik paused and turned to Tenuk. “You are half Voidborn though.”
“Yeah, I am, but I don’t give a shit about Voidborns. Most of them are assholes. Myself included.”
“At least he is honest about it…” Elksi admitted. “Still seems like… a shame, I guess…” Elksi also paused, lost in thought. “Anyway, changing the subject. What are we going to do with the twenty tons of gold that we liberated?”
Tenuk let out a little laugh. “We’ll keep it to ourselves, I guess…”