The Aperios (Children of the Sun Book 4)

Rayni took in a breath to calm down. She was more than a little nervous about this whole telepathy amplifier thing. It looked scary, especially given that this would link up with her mind, as far as she understood the very extensive explanation Yorin had given her, but even beyond that, she was really concerned she wouldn’t be able to do this.

Rayni had asked Mereria about this whole strongest telepath thing, and she’d apparently suspected it, but hadn’t said anything because she hadn’t known for sure. Which Rayni had no idea how to feel about, but in the end it would have probably not changed much if she had known. But no matter the case, she’d said that it would make sense, and Yorin seemed to be absolutely certain he was right. Somehow neither of this made Rayni feel more sure of herself.

She breathed in again, taking the amplifier from Yorin.

“Just put it on your head. It should automatically synchronise with your mind,” he said, smiling away as if this wasn’t the weirdest sentence ever.

“How does that even work?” Rayni regretted asking as soon as the sentence left her mouth. But thankfully she managed to stop Yorin before he could get even a word out. “No, nevermind, that’s okay.”

Yorin looked almost crestfallen that his nerd talk wasn’t appreciated, which did make Rayni feel like a bit of a jerk, but right now she was mostly concerned about the metal bowl she was about to put on her head.

Since the more she thought about this the weirder this felt, she just closed her eyes and put the amplifier on.

She frowned when nothing really happened and opened her eyes again. The device was humming faintly, and glowing, judging by the lights reflecting off the cave walls, but she didn’t feel any different.

“Great.” Yorin clasped his hands behind his back, straightening his back. “Now, try to break through my mental defences.”

That was a bit of a tall order. Wasn’t Yorin incredibly old and smart? But he had said that the amplifier would make doing this much easier, so if he really was as smart as he seemed, it should work.

Rayni shut her eyes again, feeling all the minds around her. They had gone into the far back of the cave to avoid Rayni accidentally hurting someone with her telepathy. Yorin had seemed to think that she was being overly cautious but had gone with it anyway, which Rayni was glad for.

To her shock, though, her mind felt much clearer somehow. Like she could actually focus on only one person at a time without being overwhelmed by everyone else. This was so weird, yet also really relaxing. How the hell did this thing work?

“Wow, this is awesome.”

Yorin offered a small smile, which reminded Rayni what she was supposed to try to do. Right, try to get past Yorin’s defences.

She closed her eyes, breathing in and latching onto Yorin’s mental signature. Even though she couldn’t actually see anything, it felt like shades of blue and silver. She would stop then, to try to figure out how this whole thing even made any sense, but she had long since given up on trying to understand telepathy in general.

She pushed against the consciousness, meeting a wall immediately, but unlike before when she’d be thrown back and would have to put a lot of effort into trying again, this time she could just easily push again and again with precise, quick strikes, making the barrier slowly start to crumble.

Rayni continued her mental assault, quite quickly and with barely any effort demolishing Yorin’s defences. He immediately proceeded to put up more walls, trying to push her out of his head, but she just swatted them aside with a thought, as if it was nothing. As if she wasn’t engaged in a mental battle with a much more powerful being.

And finally, all of the mental walls shattered, letting her go in as far as shewanted to. But she had no right to invade Yorin’s privacy, and she felt bad enough about having done it to other people by accident.

Before she could retreat though, she was presented with a memory. And the sight of the dark red, scaly monster was enough to make her pause. This was Enor. She somehow knew immediately, most likely due to this being a memory of Yorin’s.

Rayni knew that they used to look like lizards—she had been told that many times over, after all. She had just never imagined lizard people would look so…. She didn’t want to say scary, but they were definitely fearsome.

Enor the Lizard Person spoke in a hissing language, which immediately translated itself in Rayni’s mind. “It’s not wrong. Don’t you see how amazing this is?” He seemed confused, maybe even hurt. It was hard to tell with how limited their expressions seemed to be, but his tone illustrated it well enough. “I found the cure for death.”

Rayni blinked as she was suddenly pushed out of Yorin’s mind. Still feeling completely disoriented, Rayni grimaced awkwardly. She hadn’t meant to stay, but that memory had sucked her in.

“Uh, sorry about that.”

Yorin shook his head, looking a bit dazed. “No, it’s all right. I just wasn’t expecting you to be so...successful.”

And neither had Rayni. She gestured at the device on her head with both her index fingers. “This thing is insane.”

Yorin for once actually looked concerned. “Yes, I would have to agree.”

Rayni frowned. Shouldn’t that be a good thing? They could use this to free the people Enor was controlling, right? That sounded great to her. In fact, she was practically pumped to go find an aircraft and try out how effective this amplifier really was.

“I will have to install some kind of self-destruct program into the amplifier,” Yorin continued, looking sad at the prospect of destroying it. But at least Rayni now knew what the problem was.

“Right, in the wrong hands, yada yada.”

The thought of Enor having this was terrifying. Rayni didn’t want to be a pessimist, but their chances of winning this were not looking that great with how many people were on Enor’s side, so it was definitely better not to risk it. Though the thought of Enor once again made her think of the creature she’d seen.

It made her wonder what Yorin had looked like originally, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to see it.

“Exactly. But I am ecstatic about the results so far,” Yorin continued, reaching out to silently ask for the amplifier back. Rayni took it off, immediately assaulted by other people’s thoughts again. Godsdammit. Rayni wished she could keep wearing it, no matter how dorky she probably looked in it, but she supposed she would have to deal.

She almost jumped when Mel appeared from nowhere, giving her his best puppy eyes. “Are you all right?”

Rayni rubbed her eyes before patting his shoulder. She didn’t need to have her telepathy going crazy to know he was worrying about Kaleth again. “Yeah, I’m good, little bro.”

Yorin excused himself, going back to the mess of wires, computer cards, pieces of metal, and who knew what else that was in the corner a few steps away. There was also the glass cube thing that created stuff, which the Umbra used to make uniforms, but Rayni couldn’t remember what Yorin called it.

Rayni almost grinned when she saw the guy plop himself down in the middle of the technological mess and start putting wires together.

“How are you holding up, huh?” she asked Mel who, despite her assurances, still looked super worried. He sighed and hung his head, which was a good enough answer on its own. She drew him into a hug, which he immediately returned. She could practically hear him thinking, but she was doing her best not to accidentally hear what about. If he didn’t want to tell her, she wasn’t going to prod at him.

“It will be okay.” That was a lie and they both knew it, but Mel still smiled at her slightly as he let go. He opened his mouth to say something when suddenly his eyes widened and he turned around, just in time to see Kaleth and Relioth fly in. Those wings were still pretty damned impressive.

Of course Mel immediately ran up to him and hugged him, which Rayni just grinned at as she also walked towards Kaleth, and everyone else who had now gathered around. No one had said anything about leaving, which Rayni really appreciated, though she could feel the uncertainty of Kara and Orina in particular, probably due to not having superpowers.

In Rayni’s opinion, though, Kara didn’t need them to hold her own. She had always been the best fighter out of all of them. She couldn’t comment on Orina, but she was also like forty years old and could make her own decisions.

“Does the amplifier work?” Kaleth asked, still keeping an arm and a wing around Mel.

“Yep,” Rayni confirmed, folding her arms. “What’s the plan?”

Everyone turned their attention to Kaleth again, who stayed silent for a moment. Rayni knew that look, even with the goggles covering half his face. This was how he always looked when he had some risky idea and was conflicted about it.

“It’s simple. We’ll separate into groups, most of which will go around trying to stop the assault on Irithara with the amplifiers, assuming more can be made.”

Kaleth looked directly at Yorin, who turned out to be standing right behind Rayni. She hadn’t even noticed. Yorin confirmed that it wasn’t going to be a problem, though he seemed a bit hesitant, probably concerned about having more of these things around. With how powerful they seemed to be, that made sense. So far, this sounded reasonable, though.

“And what will you be doing?” Rayni asked, pretty sure that she was voicing what everyone else was thinking. Kaleth scowled at her, but that was only because she’d seen through his plans, she was sure. Usually Kaleth didn’t have a hero complex, but in this case, he sure seemed to. He was the only one strong enough to challenge Enor, sure, but it was a fair observation to make.

“Seeing as Relioth and I are the only ones who can teleport—”

“You’re going to fight Enor alone?” Mel exclaimed, actually looking outraged. Rayni wanted to agree with him, but the more she thought about it, the more she sided with Kaleth. He and Relioth could always get out of trouble if they needed to, and while they would help with moving around Irithara, it did make sense for them to go right to Enor instead since without their leader, the threat of his army would get substantially smaller. Rayni doubted Enor had told them what his actual plan was—he didn’t seem like the type.

So while Rayni didn’t like it, it was a solid plan. Having more people in that damned ship might even hinder them, too.

“He can’t stop us from going in, and we can leave if it goes wrong,” Kaleth replied, practically repeating what Rayni had thought. But he also scowled at Mel and made himself look bigger by drawing his wings up. Rayni wasn’t sure if that had been on purpose or not, but she wasn’t going to let Kaleth treat her brother this way.

“Hey, he has a point.”

Kaleth sighed, making the wings disappear. “Enor won’t see an attack like this coming. We’ll directly attack the control room and try to get the ship away from Aleara. If he is there, I should be able to kill him before he can even notice we’re there.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” said Kara, looking at him through narrowed eyes.

“Well, then tell me a better plan.”

Rayni could tell Kaleth was getting pissy just by the way he folded his arms. But he also added the tone, in case they all missed that subtle clue.

“We could stop Enor’s forces together before confronting him,” Orina suggested, looking annoyed, but not as much as usual when it came to discussing things with Kaleth.

“The idea is to surprise him. Not to mention that across the whole planet, Enor most likely has tens of thousands of soldiers.” Hearing him use so much sarcasm, Rayni was for sure expecting him and Orina to start fighting, but it didn’t end up happening. She just shook her head and stayed silent.

“Um, technically, it’s impossible to surprise Enor,” Yorin added hesitantly. “But yes, that does sound like a better idea.”

“If we don’t attack him at the same time as we begin defending Irithara, I’m sure he’ll send an overwhelming number of his forces directly to us, and we are not going to win that.” Kaleth paused, looking at everyone around him. “We go in and kill him before he can do that.”

There was silence for a moment, until it was broken by Nef. “Wait, wouldn’t it then make more sense to stop the local attacks after you kill Enor, then?”

Kaleth shook his head. “Unfortunately, no, it wouldn’t. I need his attention on you to get the most out of the element of surprise.”

“That’s kinda mean, man,” Rayni joked. Of course she didn’t mean it, but it made this sound even more dangerous. But then again, all of this was insanely dangerous. Kaleth gave her a wry look.

“Does anyone have any other comments?”

Mereria stepped forward, raising her chin. “Are you ready to kill him? Truly ready?”

And without even a moment of hesitation, Kaleth responded. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

Mereria looked as grim as ever, but she also seemed pleased somehow. “Good. Then let’s go bury Enor once and for all.”