Kinisis rolled her eyes as she started turning off machinery. She seemed somewhat angry, and the other deities all knew why. Someone had been fiddling with time.
“KAIROS, GET YOUR BACKSIDE IN HERE RIGHT NOW!” the Allmaker roared. Epani and Yisini both cowered in their little perches. Kenon sighed. The four mortals, all frozen in place, could only mutter stray thoughts as the Mother of the Universe stomped around, wanting answers.
It took about a minute for Kairos to appear. He wasn’t in much of a hurry. He’d also brought with him a familiar face.
“What’s up, mother?”
Kinisis glared at Arkadin, who was happily sipping some sort of iced drink.
“Why is HE alive?”
Kairos smiled as he glanced at Arkadin. “Because I willed it so?”
“I wanted him dead.”
“Well I wanted him alive!” Kairos retorted. “Why should you kill the nicest death god we’ll ever have?”
Epani waved at Arkadin awkwardly from her perch. She obviously agreed but hadn’t said anything at all.
“He’s…”
“He’s fine!” Kairos continued. “You just took Yisini’s word for it that Arkadin’s bad.”
“Well he is!” Yisini shouted. “He’s a prick! He gets in the way of all my stuff! I just want to create long-living stuff and he ruins it all!”
“Nah, you’re just too busy masturbating to pretty Temthans to realise that I’ve left plenty of examples of strong genetics you can use to create long-lifed mortals!” Arkadin smiled, finishing his drink and placing it next to one of the four cages. “But really, do we have to have this argument again?”
“The one about you being a prick?” Yisini growled.
“Yes, the argument about you all hating me. Because I guarantee you’ll hate whatever you come up with to replace me way more than you hate me right now. But also because we’ve had this argument so many times, and just once, I was upset enough to actually go through with it.”
“But also we shouldn’t go through with the making a new death god thing because it’s breaking the universe…” Kairos added. “Take Arkadin out of the picture and things begin to decay faster. Uncontrollably so if I hadn’t slowed down time for a bit.”
Kinisis stopped making mean looks at Arkadin and turned back to Kairos. “What, really? I didn’t even notice.”
“You wouldn’t have. It’s not really something people notice unless they’re already attuned to it,” Kairos explained. “But that’s what happened and that’s what I stopped, by making sure Arkadin didn’t die. And stopping you from turning those four into worse Thantophors.”
“This is all stupid!” Kenon suddenly interrupted, smashing the cages that contained the four mortals, then proceeding to destroy more machinery at random. “None of this makes any sense! You were all supposed to get into arguments and piss off Kinisis so she’d not want to spend time with you lot, and it turned into Kinisis nearly breaking the universe by making four death gods!” Kenon smashed some more machinery then stomped off. “That does it! I’m leaving!”
The Voidlord growled then crashed through a wall, disappearing off into the darkness. The other deities stood in silence, before looking at each other and sighing.
“He really started all of this shit because he was jealous of Arky spending time with you?” Epani asked, twiddling her finned thumbs.
“I guess…” Kinisis sighed. “He does have a point though. This is all stupid. You four can sort this stuff out between you.” The Allmaker sighed again, then walked off, leaving through the hole in the wall that Kenon made.
The four personifications of existence all looked at each other again. None of them really knew what to say. Yisini rolled her eyes and grunted a few times before disappearing in a puff of pink smoke. Epani shrugged then disappeared as well, leaving the Time God and the Death God.
“What about us?” a small voice squeaked.
“Shit, I’d forgotten about them…” Kairos muttered as he glanced down at the four mortals. “Should we mind-wipe them? They’ve probably seen too much.”
“Nah. I’ll sort them out.”
Kairos smiled. “Sure. Anyway, are we agreed on next week? That nice cafe, 7pm local time?”
“Sure.”
“Cool. See you then.”
The Whenvern flapped his wings then took off, smashing through the roof of the lab, laughing as he did so.
Once the coast was clear, Arkadin turned to the four mortals. He took a deep breath, then shook his head.
“Come with me, please…”