The Aperios (Children of the Sun Book 4)

Kaleth was being weird. Rayni couldn’t put her finger on what it was, but there was something off. He was more bitchy than usual. Not to Mel, but to everyone else. Which Rayni would just assume was due to having a bad day or something, but Mereria was being weird about it too. She kept giving Rayni these looks, as if to say watch him. But so far Kaleth hadn’t actually done much that would warrant it. He’d mostly just been cutesy with Mel.

Although maybe that was cause for concern, now that she thought about it, given Kaleth’s usual embarrassment when it came to showing any emotion other than anger or sarcastic amusement.

“There is no need to bring anyone else along,” Kaleth said for at least the third time. Rayni sighed.

“Look, I don’t care how strong you are. That doesn’t mean you can’t have some backup.”

Before Kaleth could argue back, and Rayni had no doubts that he would have given the option, Mereria cut in. No, wait, actually this was Edras. It still messed with Rayni’s head.

“No worries, Rayni. The four of us will be enough.”

Rayni watched her stroll to the window, staring down at the planet below them. That was still such a weird thing to see in real life, but Rayni had managed not to gawk for longer periods of time now. They had brought the ship to orbit a while ago, and she’d been here when it had happened.

Their planet was still a gorgeous view though. Blue, green, and red, shining with the sun’s light.

“It’s obviously a trap, though.” They had gotten a place from one of the Eternals they had managed to capture already, which was suspicious by itself. Sure, it didn’t have to be a trap, but this person had been prepared to kill for her freedom. Why would she just easily turn on her group like this?

And for a group that had formed only days ago, they already had a shocking amount of members from what Rayni could tell. There had been dozens of attacks reported, some on completely unrelated, normal people, too.

“We’re much more skilled than them,” Kaleth said, somehow sounding even more confident than ever before. Almost dismissive, in fact. “Not to mention much more powerful.”

“Some of these are ex-Luxarx.”

That actually got him to raise his eyebrows in surprise. “Really?” He hummed before waving his hand. “Well, my point still stands. Mereria is one of the strongest Eternals alive, also.”

Yeah, Rayni knew she was probably being too cautious, but the problem was that Kaleth wasn’t being cautious at all. And Mel was thinking as much too if his worried frowns were anything to go by. Rayni wondered if they were actually talking inside their heads, but there was no way for her to pick up on it anymore, with the metal device Yorin had given her stuck to her temple.

Rayni still wasn’t entirely sure what the device did, but it seemed to weaken her telepathic abilities considerably enough to make the noise of thoughts go away. But it also meant that it effectively made her telepathy useless. But Rayni wasn’t going to complain.

“I agree,” Mel said, sounding almost glum as he gave Kaleth his trademark puppy eyes. “But let’s not rush in too much without knowing what we’re getting ourselves into.”

Kaleth sighed, giving in. “Yes, all right. I suppose we shouldn’t underestimate them.”

Rayni bit back the urge to tell him that he was the one who had been doing that, but she kept it to herself. She didn’t need to get in a fight with him right now, or ever. They had a job to do and lives to save. It made Rayni a bit sick just imagining how many people had died down below because of all the protests.

Mereria had said something about people constantly dying anyway, but this was different. Rayni didn’t remember this much uproar ever happening in Enoria, but that made sense since until now it had been controlled by Relioth, Enor, and whoever else. Sure, there had been some revolutions, but there was just something surreal about witnessing it happening.

“Where are they?” Kaleth asked.

“Remember those super secret bunkers Luxax had?”

Rayni couldn’t help but grin at how shocked Kaleth looked by that. He clearly hadn’t been expecting that.

“How do you know about those?”

Rayni shrugged, still grinning. She knew a lot about Luxarx she probably hadn’t been meant to know in hindsight. But she got a lot of info from people there just by talking to them. Kaleth should know as much.

It was so weird to think about those times. It felt a lifetime ago. And if she thought about it, even though she’d worked for Luxarx for years, it had only been a tiny fraction of her life. Too bad she didn’t remember it, and she probably never would. But then again, she stood by not minding it too much. Who knew what she’d done in the past that wasn’t all that great?

“So we can assume these are actually Luxarx agents?”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

Rayni sighed. This was exactly why she didn’t want to underestimate any of these Eternals. And honestly it was a bit hard to keep reminding herself of that because no matter what those Eternals had in store, they most likely had no chance against Kaleth and Mereria. But seeing them again, especially if they knew them beyond just passing them in a corridor, might make it difficult to fight them.

“Splendid.”

Rayni snorted. Kaleth’s deadpan reactions were always good for a laugh.

“Which bunker is it? Or is it all of them?”

Rayni had to think about this for a moment. She hadn’t really thought that all of them might serve as hideouts for the Eternals, but it was entirely possible. She frowned. “Well, we only know about one. But who knows. This one is the one just outside Enbrant.”

She was pretty sure Kaleth had been there once or twice, but she had no idea what it had actually been for. Getting anything out of Kaleth aside from complaints about inconsequential stuff had been kind of hard back then.

“Are we ready to go, then?”

And there he was, being weird again. Why was he being so impatient? Sure, Kaleth was an impatient bastard, but this felt different. Rayni had actually thought he would appreciate the distraction from all the other problems there were now. Maybe he had wanted more alone time with Mel, but he hadn’t seemed like he was just agreeing to this because Mel wanted to help back at his place.

“Yep,” Edras said, surprisingly upbeat as she went back over to them, her hands on the handles of Mereria’s swords. She was probably just stoked that she was around her brother. Even if said brother was being weird.

“You know how to get us there?” Rayni actually truly had no idea how Kaleth’s teleportation worked, but he still shot her a dirty look, as if he thought she’d just implied he wasn’t up to this.

And apparently he’d also taken it as a challenge because the next thing Rayni knew, Kaleth’s eyes were glowing gold and the four of them were standing in the middle of a field. Since when could he teleport like that without physical contact or whatever?

“I overshot a little. Apologies.”

His tone didn’t make it sound like he regretted it even a little. He mostly seemed pissed off with himself.

“Well, you could get us closer, right?”

The glare Kaleth shot her for saying that was definitely not at all called for, but it wasn’t that that made her speechless. It was the flash of panic in his eyes that appeared for a split second, but Rayni couldn’t unsee it.

What was going on with him?

“It doesn’t matter, honey. We can just walk the rest of the way.”

Despite the hand Mel was keeping on Kaleth’s shoulder, he shot Rayni a concerned look. So he was aware that it had been weird, too. Rayni hoped he wasn’t just going to ignore it and move on because it was easier.

Dammit, she wished she could talk to Mel via telepathy, but that wasn’t going to fly right now.

So they started walking, with Kaleth in the lead because he apparently did know where to go from here. To Rayni their surroundings looked incredibly similar, and she could barely tell where north and south were. But she just followed without saying anything. If Kaleth was this easy to upset than it would be better to keep this stuff to herself.

Within what felt like ten minutes they stood before the entrance to the bunker. A mostly metal structure sticking out of the side of a hill, with a small concrete staircase leading down to the door. It didn’t look suspicious by itself, but Rayni was already looking for booby traps.

“Well, there’s definitely someone inside,” Kaleth said. His eyes were glowing again. “But I can’t tell where exactly. Or who it is.”

“Don’t try to get inside their minds,” Edras said immediately, walking up to Kaleth to grab his shoulder, as if to physically stop him. “We wanna talk to them first.”

Kaleth didn’t seem happy about that, but he said nothing. Honestly, Rayni could get behind that. Kaleth could probably put whoever was inside of the bunker out of commission before even entering. But the whole idea was to get more information, and maybe hopefully try to explain their side of things. Especially if these really were ex-Luxarx agents.

“Let’s go inside, then.”

Kaleth didn’t even bother raising his arm as he made the door open with the squeal of bending metal. So much for the element of surprise, though there probably hadn’t been a chance of that to begin with, given that this really was most likely an attempt at a trap.

Rayni followed as the three others went inside, but she didn’t even make it past the entrance before there was a click and an explosion. She immediately threw a hand in front of her face, but the heat never reached her.

Confused, she quickly checked if everyone was all right, only to see the ball of fire that should have engulfed them suspended in the air, as if frozen in time. And Rayni quickly realized that it actually was frozen in time when she saw Kaleth’s glowing eyes.

“Damn, that’s a bit much,” Edras commented as she walked back out, followed by Mel and Kaleth. Right, Kaleth probably couldn’t move the explosion anywhere, so they had to let it go off from a safe distance.

“I’d love to understand the logic behind that,” Kaleth said as the explosion went off, shaking the ground and making flames fly out of the entrance. “An explosion would do very little to kill Eternals.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like these people have othrin to throw our way,” Rayni replied, heading back to the door. It was now considerably singed, and was also possibly now stuck in the bent state Kaleth had left it, but aside from smoke making it hard to see well, not much seemed to have happened. The corridor was also blackened, of course, but it was staying in one piece.

“Also, most Eternals would be put off of coming here after having a bomb blow up in their faces,” Edras added in that good-humored tone of hers, which was frankly bizarre. And Rayni didn’t want to think about how much that would hurt, especially given that an Eternal wouldn’t die like that and would have to heal all the damage instead. Was there any limit to how much they could heal? There had to be, right?

They finally made their way into the corridor beyond the door. If the Eternals inside hadn’t been aware of their presence, they definitely were now, but they were nowhere to be seen. Rayni kept looking at the floor and the walls, hoping that if there were another bomb, or another kind of trap, she’d spot it before one of them set it off.

She certainly didn’t want to assume Kaleth could take care of any problem they’d come across because having no alternative plans was always a dumb idea.

As they reached a metal staircase leading deeper into the bunker, presumably the main area of it, Kaleth stopped, putting a hand in front of his mouth in the classic shut up gesture that had been very popular with Luxarx agents.

Rayni gave him a thumbs up, gripping the hilt of her sword. She knew it would probably be a bad idea to draw weapons already, but she also was nowhere near as optimistic or hopeful as her brother, and her cynical side couldn’t help but highly doubt that these Eternals were going to listen to them.

But she was going to follow Mereria and Edras’ ideas. Trying to take them by force immediately was definitely not going to help, and while diplomacy was boring, she’d had enough fighting to last her for the rest of the century at least.

As they reached the end of the stairs, Rayni took note of all the computers and tech-y things all around the room, most of which was sitting very neatly on the tables around the circular room. She knew there were more rooms like this here, but this had to be the main one.

And just as she found the corridor that would lead to the other rooms, she froze when she saw a man standing in front of it, his arms folded in a very unimpressed way. And she knew very well who this guy was, unfortunately.

“Ferim?”

Rayni let out an uneasy breath at Kaleth’s surprised tone. She was pretty sure these two hadn’t had all that much contact with each other, despite Ferim being a part of the Luxarx Management, and there was a reason for that. Among many other things, Ferim’s homophobia.

This was going to go just fine. At least Kaleth didn’t have a weapon with him. Which was really arrogant of him, now that Rayni thought about it, but right now it was a good thing.

“That’s Agent Ferim to you, Garen,” the guy replied, making Rayni grind her teeth. Great start.

“There is no Luxarx anymore, and my name hasn’t been Garen for twenty years. Being immortal is no excuse for being so out of touch.”

Rayni blinked at the incredibly cold tone Kaleth had used. It was already this bad, and the guy hadn’t even said anything too bad yet. This was off to a fantastic start. She made her way to them, staying between them. She was definitely not strong enough to keep Kaleth back if he really wanted to beat Ferim senseless, not that he wouldn’t deserve it, but she would have to hope he’d listen to her.

“I never understood why he liked you, you know,” Ferim said.

“Who’s he?” Rayni asked, already pretty sure she knew the answer. Ferim just looked at her with as much ridicule as he could possibly put in a single look.

“Relioth, of course.” Then he looked back at Kaleth. “How else would a fag like him get to join Luxarx?”

Rayni cringed. Well, there it was. It hadn’t taken long, had it?

Despite knowing she’d regret it, she looked at Kaleth. But instead of a murderous glare, there was just a very scary smile on his face. It was unusual by itself when Kaleth smiled, but this looked completely sadistic. But no, it wasn’t actually the smile that made it look scary. It was that it was paired with those glowing eyes. In the dark, it was just disturbing to see.

“Oh, Ferim. What is it like being this disgustingly insecure?”

Rayni looked from one to the other, noting that Mel and Edras had joined her on the opposite side. This wasn’t going at all how she thought it would, but she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. This could potentially end even worse.

Ferim seemed too taken aback by the unexpected reaction that he didn’t manage to say anything before Kaleth continued.

“Your wife left you for a woman. It’s nice to finally know what your problem is.” And Rayni continued staring at Kaleth with wide eyes. How the hell did he know that? “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe it wasn’t because you are awful in bed, but because you are in fact awful all around?”

At this point Rayni’s mouth hung open. The friendly gossip around the watercooler had never gotten this juicy, but she didn’t want to know these things. Or mock people about them, no matter how awful they were. This was way out of line.

“Kaleth, back off,” she said, trying to say it in the calmest tone she could muster. But Kaleth didn’t even look at her, and instead his smile got sharper. Poor Mel looked almost horrified when Rayni took a quick glance at him.

“Get out of my head, Garen!” Ferim yelled at him, his eyes now glowing too with a bright red light. Of course his color would be an aggressive red. “You have no right to do this!”

Kaleth didn’t reply, but his eyes glowed even more brightly, which was enough of an answer by itself. Followed by Ferim groaning as he held his head. “Oh, and I see she married you only because you got her pregnant in college. Why am I not surprised?”

“Kaleth, enough!” Mel snapped in probably the most commanding tone he could muster, but it also sounded so, so heartbroken. It did at least work in snapping Kaleth out of his episode of publicly shaming their ex-boss.

Rayni didn’t even get to yell at him, though, being completely shocked into silence by his look of absolute horror that followed right after. It couldn’t be missed, even with his eyes glowing like they were. At first she’d thought that it was because he’d realized how shady what he’d just done was, but then she heard a crash from behind her, and when she turned around, Ferim was dead.

She wasn’t given any time to process that or figure out how it happened before they were attacked from all sides by other Eternals, presumably Luxarx agents. Rayni clashed swords with the woman nearest to her, pushing her back.

The whole bunker was filled with the sound of metal hitting against metal, but the fighting was short lived because within the next minute, Kaleth sent out a wave of light, pinning the Eternals that had attacked them to the walls.

Rayni quickly snapped one of the Eternal handcuffs onto the woman’s wrists, completely ignoring whatever she yelled at her during, as she began piecing together what had just happened.

“You...killed him,” she could hear Edras say to Kaleth. And yeah, that was Rayni’s conclusion too. She quickly checked the room, noting that they had captured all six Eternals that were left. They didn’t seem all that interested in fighting, probably due to how much power Kaleth had just shown he had, which was good, but Rayni wouldn’t assume they’d stay like this.

But it was hard to focus on anything except Kaleth right now. And the dead body a few steps away. Kaleth for the most part had returned to his usual emotionless expression and body language, but now it looked really forced.

“How the hell did you even do that?”

That was not the question Rayni would have asked, to be honest. “Yeah, and why the hell did you do it?”

Kaleth glared at both her and his sister, with way too much anger. “He wanted to kill Mel. I stopped him before he could.”

Rayni felt like screaming at him. He really didn’t see the problem here, did he? But they couldn’t have a drama right now. And she wasn’t interested in hearing what the Eternals they’d just captured had to say about it. Though they mostly looked scared by the fact that Kaleth had just killed an Eternal with his mind.

“Let’s bring these people to the Umbra holding rooms. Then we’ll talk,” she said, narrowing her eyes at Kaleth, who glared back. And next to him, Mel looked like he couldn’t decide if he should also glare or cry.

Mereria’s words echoed through her mind. Her prediction that Kaleth would eventually become like Enor. But that just made Rayni angrier. Kaleth was very obviously showing that he didn’t like whatever was going on here. He was trying to hide it now, but it was still obvious he was shaken by it. They were going to fix this, whatever it was, before it got out of hand.