The Return to Irithara (Children of the Sun Book 2)

Despite the fact that they were basically going on a suicide mission, Rayni was having quite a good time chatting with Nira’s father. The guy was weirdly upbeat for an Iritharian. He was also surprisingly funny for a nobleman. Or maybe she’d just spent too much time with Kaleth and assumed all noble people were as serious and formal as him.

It also amused Rayni to no end how Mereria kept giving her and Hidarion sour looks. As if she thought she and Hidarion had spent the entire trip flirting or something. Rayni didn’t bother explaining this to her, though, that would ruin the fun.

All in all, Rayni wouldn’t mind going out drinking with the guy after this was all over, assuming they both survived this. Iritharians were infamous for their drinking habits, after all.

Right now, though, she had to listen to him and Kaleth discuss strategy for what felt like the hundredth time, and the awkwardness between them was killing her. Usually, it would most likely be fun to watch, but it was just painful this time.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out Hidarion had a thing for Kaleth. Where he’d got it from was a different matter, but Rayni assumed it had happened during the fake negotiations that had taken over a month. She remembered that time well. To replace Kaleth as team leader during his absence, they’d gotten an even bigger stick-in-the-mud.

It also didn’t take a genius to figure out that Kaleth didn’t reciprocate Hidarion’s feelings by how hard he tried avoiding personal subjects, and how Hidarion kept staring sadly at the map of Aleara and its surroundings on the table in front of them. Also, if Kaleth was on board with this, Rayni would punch him because her brother sure as hell deserved better than this.

Working in this environment was basically impossible, but Rayni stayed away from it because it just wasn’t worth it. If she tried making fun of them, Kaleth would get snappy and Hidarion even sadder, and if she told them to talk it out, they would just either deny everything or tell her they didn’t have time for it.

Ever since she’d joined Luxarx, Rayni often felt like she was in high school again. Actually, she probably had never been in high school, but her fake memories clearly fit with what she was seeing here.

Except both of these morons were over forty years old!

“Okay, so to recap,” Rayni said when they both stayed quiet for a good twenty seconds. “We get out of this tunnel here.” She pointed at the map at a spot right next to Alara. It was a shame they couldn’t get closer, but there apparently wasn’t any other still usable exit at this point. At least that was what the moody Iritharian Eternal had told them.

“Then we somehow need to go around the city without being seen, get here.” Rayni once again pointed at a spot on the map, this time behind the palace, but almost outside the city. “And go into some medieval tunnel that might not even be there—”

“It’s definitely there, don’t worry,” Hidarion said, smiling. He totally looked like a parent amused by his child’s antics when he did that. Rayni wasn’t sure how she felt about it, but it always did remind her that she looked only a little older than Nira, even though she was apparently four freaking hundred years old. So she understood why Hidarion looked at her this way, but that didn’t mean it made sense.

This, however, led to an epiphany. All this time, she’d been making fun of Kaleth for being ‘old’. Maybe she should have instead used her age as a reason he should listen to her more because she had to be so much more experienced and wise.

“Right, so we go through the totally existing, old-as-hell tunnels, and then ambush the most powerful Eternal in Irithara. That it?”

“I’m the most powerful Eternal in Irithara,” Kaleth corrected her casually as he peered at the map more closely.

“You’re not an Eternal at all,” Rayni said back to him, folding her arms. “You’re some kind of weird-ass hybrid. Doesn’t count.”

“Of course it counts,” he replied, still trying to look like he was only partly paying attention to her. He did this pretty often, so Rayni was used to it, but to this day, she hadn’t figured out if he did it on purpose.

“How do you even know you’re stronger that Irif?”

Kaleth paused for a bit, most likely trying to come up with an argument that would finally shut her up. “I’m stronger than Relioth,” he finally said, although, despite his obvious attempt at sounding sure of himself, he came off as trying to convince himself instead.

“Oh, right, so you’re just assuming, then.”

Kaleth gave her a tired look as if that would instantly convince her to drop this. “Dude, this isn’t about who’s stronger. Your ego isn’t the important thing here. I just don’t want you to overestimate yourself and get killed, understand?”

Kaleth gave a curt nod, which was actually more than Rayni had been expecting. Whenever Kaleth’s ego was on the line, he usually either stormed off or glared at everyone and everything.

“Great. Glad we got that settled,” Rayni muttered just as the train stopped. “Welp, let’s do this.” She was about to set out to find a door to leave the subway train, but Kaleth stopped her.

“I noticed you had othrin handcuffs on you earlier. Do you still have them?”

Rayni frowned at him suspiciously as Hidarion left the compartment. “Yes. Why?”

“Mel can’t come with us,” he replied softly, sadness clear in his eyes. “The way he’s handled himself so far…. He’ll get himself killed by throwing himself at every bullet coming my way.”

Rayni opened her mouth to argue against chaining up her little brother so he can’t leave, but what other option was there? Neither she nor Kaleth wanted Mel to come, they were both worried he would get killed, but Mel wasn’t going to listen to either of them. Still, this seemed pretty last-resort-y to her.

“Not like we couldn’t see that coming,” Rayni tried to joke, but even to her it sounded weak. The important thing was that she wanted her brother as far away from Aleara as possible, and even though she didn’t like this idea, she couldn’t deny it would work, and all that would get hurt would be Mel’s feelings.

“Here,” she said, throwing him the cuffs. Kaleth caught them with one hand, almost absently. As selfish as this sounded, Rayni was really glad she didn’t have to watch this. Trying not to think about what Kaleth was about to do, Rayni left the compartment and followed the other Eternals outside.

When she finally stepped out into the dark tunnel, she breathed in deeply, the cold air stabbing at her lungs. It wasn’t unpleasant though, mostly just refreshing. It did make her wonder just how cold it was going to be outside.

Upon further inspection, Rayni realized that they were all actually standing on one of the platforms, which she probably should have realized sooner given that she hadn’t jumped down when getting out of the subway train.

It didn’t take long for all of them to appear and once that happened, they all started making their way up the stairs towards the light. After being in complete darkness for hours, it was pretty damn annoying how bright it was outside. It didn’t hurt Rayni’s eyes or anything, but it was still really unpleasant.

“I never thought I’d be here ever again,” said Mereria next to her, shaking her head as they finally set foot outside. “Much less allied with Relioth’s soldiers and Iritharians.”

Everything around them was somehow very mundane. Just a lot of snow, pine trees, and the occasional rock or hill. Rayni had been expecting to see the city, but she supposed they were too far away still.

“You’ve been here before?” Rayni asked, kinda interested as to why now that she had nothing interesting to look at. The cold, cold air seemed to have a good impact on her, though, because it kind of felt like her brain rebooted. Very refreshing.

It was also good that even though it was way too cold for not wearing two or three parkas and a coat over them, she didn’t feel cold at all. It was stinging her face, but her uniform seemed to protect the rest of her body.

Neat.

“Oh, yes, I’ve been here many times. Enor used to send me and Tharos here with his army from time to time to make sure Irif didn’t forget who was stronger,” Mereria replied, pulling her mask over her mouth and her hood over her head. Rayni guessed Mereria could feel the cold as well and didn’t like it.

“And there was also the time at the very beginning when Tharos and I tried to burn this place to the ground and nearly succeeded.”

“You mean Aleara?”

“No, this entire continent,” Mereria replied, raising an eyebrow.

Well, damn, Rayni’s sort-of-not-really-anymore girlfriend was a person who’d helped almost commit a genocide. She would have to ponder this another time, though.

“I’ve changed.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

Then Rayni spotted Kaleth. She made sure to look around in case he hadn’t done what he’d said, but Mel didn’t seem to be anywhere to be seen. And neither was Nef, now that she thought about it.

“Is he...okay?” Rayni asked Kaleth as she walked up to him. Kaleth was clearly forcing himself to seem emotionless, but there was this whole depressing air surrounding him. Not that Rayni couldn’t tell he wasn’t all right just by looking at him without these fancy powers.

“Physically, yes,” Kaleth said curtly, clearly unwilling to talk about this right now, instead choosing to address the others and switching to his speech mode.

“Roughly thirty minutes northwest is Aleara. We are not going to fly directly there, seeing as that would be suicide,” he said, as serious as ever. Actually, this time, he might have been even more serious than that. “Instead, we are going to fly to old escape tunnels to infiltrate the palace and kill Irif, as suggested by the King of Irithara.”

It was so weird hearing someone refer to Hidarion as the King of Irithara. It just sounded wrong, given how normal Hidarion had seemed to Rayni so far.

“Once that is over with, we are going to use the same tunnels to escape. We’ll improvise if necessary, but we are not going to destroy half the city in the process. If I see anyone killing civilians on purpose, I won’t hesitate to put a stop to it and to the person doing it. Understood?”

No one argued with him, though a few of Relioth’s soldiers looked almost pleased that they’d been yelled at and threatened with execution. Rayni was really starting to doubt their mental health.

Getting an expectant look from Mereria, Rayni switched forms, trying to focus on the word ‘white’ while doing so. She honestly had no idea how else to control it. It seemed to work, however, now that she was looking at her front legs.

Mereria seemed a bit impressed by this as she climbed onto her back. Or well, jumped because Rayni hadn’t bothered lowering herself down to the ground. Everyone else slowly switched color as well, with the help of an actual freaking hippogriff.

Rayni stared at the huge, feathered beast carrying Nira and her father, trying to figure out who this was.

“Yorin,” Mereria cleared up. She sounded relatively disinterested in it.

“Someone you know?” Rayni asked, tilting her head to look back at Mereria.

“Used to know,” Mereria said vaguely, and Rayni dropped the subject, mostly because she didn’t really care enough to listen to Mereria complain. All Rayni knew was that Yorin had apparently fixed the subway train, and that was about it.

Just as Rayni was starting to wonder who was going to give Kaleth a lift, Edras called from Rayni’s back: “Come on, Kaleth, there’s enough room here for two.”

Then she looked at Rayni. “You don’t mind, right?”

“I guess not. Depends on how much your brother weighs,” Rayni replied, smirking at Kaleth’s annoyance.

“Are you actually trying to call me fat?” he asked, shaking his head. It was probably meant to make Rayni feel childish, but she just snickered. She hoped she would never get to the point of this not being funny to her. “I believe you’re the heaviest one here currently.”

“Ouch, man,” Rayni said, putting a paw over her heart. Or at least where she thought was her heart. She had no idea how dragon anatomy worked.

Without another word, Kaleth climbed on her back, settling behind his half-sister. Rayni supposed he wasn’t that heavy, but he was noticeably heavier than Edras. Not surprising since Edras barely had any muscles.

As she saw the others slowly take flight one by one, staying just above the layer of snow that covered their entire surrounding, Rayni shot a regretful look behind her at the entrance to the tunnel. What would happen to Mel if they didn’t return? Would he be trapped there forever?

Rayni shook her head slightly. No, she would make sure she’d come back to free him if the situation got bad enough, even if it meant leaving the others behind. With that thought prominent in her mind, Rayni flapped her wings, ascending a bit before mimicking the others and flying just high enough not to hit the ground with her wings.

No one said anything during the final trip. Not surprising since not even Rayni wanted to talk. Usually she wanted to at least joke even during tense situations, but this time, she was just glad for the silence. She had enough to think about, especially once Aleara became visible in the distance.

Rayni might not like Irithara as a whole, but she had to admit, they had some pretty architecture. Except for that jeweled dragon statue at the top of the palace, that was just an eyesore. Rayni had a pretty good idea of who it was representing though.

The golden palace was almost blinding as she flew ever closer to it. It made Rayni wonder if they were completely insane by attacking during the day. She supposed they could wait. There wasn’t anything really stopping them from doing that, but the longer they waited, the more likely it was Irif would either find them, or prepare herself enough for their arrival that they wouldn’t stand a chance.

Not that their chances were that great to begin with, but why make the situation even worse? Maybe Irif didn’t know that Hidarion was with them.

Rayni’s brain stopped for a bit when she realized who Hidarion actually was. He was about to fight his kind-of wife to the death. If that wasn’t a messed up family situation, Rayni didn’t know what was. Next to this, chaining up her little brother in a subway train seemed almost normal.

Rayni focused more on Yorin and his passengers who were just a little ahead of her, trying to find out how they were doing. Yorin didn’t seem to want to be here with how he kept looking to the side and behind himself. Not surprising given what Rayni had heard Irif had done to him just a while ago.

Nira seemed to keep looking at Aleara, radiating anger and determination. Nira’s little power boost really must have helped her confidence because the mess of emotions Rayni was getting from her was frankly overwhelming. Rayni really needed to catch up with her later. If they survived.

Focusing on Hidarion himself now, she could tell he was not totally aboard for this ride. He seemed to be going because people around him wanted him to help. Now, Rayni didn’t know how strong he actually was, and she definitely wasn’t complaining about another person helping them fight Irif, but just from the few hours of being around him, Rayni could tell that if the situation happened that he was the last man standing, having to deliver the killing blow, Hidarion wouldn’t do it.

He was too much of a softie to do it. Even if Irif had tortured him, stabbed out his eye, and taken over his wife’s body, he wasn’t going to kill her because she still looked like her. Rayni had witnessed something similar with Kara and another Luxarx agent she used to date.

Rayni couldn’t remember his name anymore, but that didn’t really matter. The short story was that he’d betrayed them and had given Umbra some vital information about Luxarx, for which he was to be killed. Kara had volunteered, but in the end, she couldn’t do it, and Kaleth had done it for her.

Rayni sighed. She wondered where Kara was right now. She’d really thought she would have at least tried to contact them, yell at all of them for going along with such a crazy plan, just anything, but….

Rayni was glad Kara wasn’t here, though, for the same reason Nef wasn’t here. Rayni had no idea where he was, but she had a feeling he’d gotten a similar treatment as Mel, which she was sure he was taking very well.

As they got closer and closer to Aleara, Rayni kept her eyes on the sky. There were way more vehicles above the city that they probably should be, which made sense since it must have been obvious to Irif they were heading to Aleara. However, it would make sneaking in very difficult. Not to mention the obvious army of soldiers guarding the city with tanks.

Weirdly enough, though, the part of the city they actually needed to approach seemed to be much less guarded. This was a trap, wasn’t it?

Definitely a trap, Kaleth said in her mind as if the act of talking out loud would give them away.

But we’re going anyway, Rayni added, not making it sound like a question. She knew the answer without him confirming it.

If we don’t, millions of people will die.

Yeah, man, I know, no need to remind me. Actually, it was kind of good of him to remind her. It was good to hear what was at stake, even though she already knew.

Keep heading towards the tunnels. This is most likely a trap, so be on your guard.

It took Rayni a few seconds—an embarrassing amount of time—to put together that Kaleth had told that to everyone, not just her.

Finally reaching the supposed entrance to the tunnels, which was currently just a small hill covered in snow, Yorin quickly went to work, digging with his claws into the snow, ice, and dirt. Rayni would have offered to help him, but a few other Eternals closer to him did it first. They were doing quite well, but Rayni’s attention was quickly forced another way when she heard a gun going off behind her.

There was a metal clink, and she whipped around, seeing soldiers approach them from afar. Kaleth and Edras quickly jumped off her back, and Rayni decided to switch forms. As a dragon, she was too easy a target.

Thankfully, she had brought a gun, as did everyone else.

As she took aim, she heard another few clinks, and finally realized it was Kaleth blocking the bullets being shot at them with his shield. How he was actually doing it was up for debate, though—a debate for another time.

She quickly took cover next to a tree and aimed and squeezed the trigger, hitting one of the soldiers directly between his eyes. She was almost shocked by her precision before she remembered that she now had unfair advantages with her newly restored power.

She kept up her offensive, taking out one soldier after the other while Edras—or maybe Mereria—did the same. Kaleth handled the defense and was also apparently speeding up time for them again because the enemy soldiers were suddenly taking their sweet time shooting.

The way is clear, someone said, most likely Yorin, and Rayni looked behind her. There was now a dark hole in the hill, too small to fit the regular Eternal. As much as she didn’t want to climb into another dark tunnel, she would gladly do so since out here she was being shot at.

Everyone in the tunnels! commanded Mereria, continuing to fire at the soldiers. Everyone did as they were told, quickly disappearing inside the hole. Everyone except for Kaleth, who seemed to have trouble standing, much less walking.

Rayni almost growled in annoyance as she quickly put one of his arms around the back of her neck and dragged him away, as quickly as possible getting into the tunnel as well. Once they were inside, she pushed him up against the old brick wall of the tunnel.

“What the hell was that?” she snapped, and he grimaced.

“Time manipulation is a taxing activity,” he replied softly.

“So maybe don’t do it so much that you can’t even walk anymore,” Rayni said firmly. Kaleth looked away, apparently having a hard time keeping his eyes open.

The others apparently hadn’t waited to see their drama and had in the meantime ventured farther into the tunnel, so Rayni helped Kaleth again and they started walking after them, every so often looking back behind her to see if the soldiers were following them.

Surprisingly, they didn’t seem to be, which only made Rayni more certain that this was a trap. As they continued walking the corridor got narrower and narrower until they couldn’t walk next to each other anymore. Thankfully, by then Kaleth seemed to have regained enough energy to walk by himself, so that was one crisis averted.

Another crisis was right in front of them, though. How did Kaleth think he was going to fight Irif if he was this tired out? Rayni was definitely glad that she hadn’t gotten shot, but sometimes Kaleth really didn’t think things through enough. They hadn’t been completely out in the open, they could have taken cover.

Rayni looked back at him with worry. What if he died just now? Rayni realized she’d been trying to accept this possibility, but it somehow just really hit her when she saw Kaleth this not battle ready.

They finally got to a point where the corridor became quite a wide hallway. Next to her, Rayni saw Kaleth pull out his sword from the sheath on his back. Rayni didn’t know why he did it, but it made her draw her own sword as well.

“Irif. She’s here,” he said. And then the ceiling collapsed.