The Aperios (Children of the Sun Book 4)

Kaleth glared at the device on his arm. Yorin had given it to him without a word, but there was no need to say anything. It was clear what it was, and Kaleth hated that even from where he was standing, away from the fight, he could clearly see it on Mel’s arm as well.

He was right. It was better to die than to become like Enor, but Kaleth wished that didn’t have to mean Mel would die with him. But Kaleth would use the device if he had to. Mel meant so much to him, but he wouldn’t sacrifice the whole world to make sure he survived. And after what Mel had told him, it was entirely possible that he would take his own life anyway, even without Kaleth killing himself.

He sighed as he kept watching the others battle a group of aircrafts, mostly trying to dodge their bullets and bombs while every single person capable of telepathy did their best to break through Enor’s control of the soldiers operating the machines using the many amplifiers Yorin had made. Judging by how every so often one of them stopped and just hovered in air before landing, it was effective.

Relioth was watching it right next to him, not even bothering to hide his nervousness as he at the same time also kept an eye on Enor’s ship, hovering dangerously close. Kaleth should feel anxious too. He should be terrified, in fact. But he just felt numb. He was going to kill Enor, who was possessing his father, which was something he had tried desperately not to think about, but now he couldn’t ignore it anymore. His only ‘comfort’ was that his father was most likely dead in there.

Yorin had said something about how the host of an Eternal, particularly of a powerful one, tended to have their consciousness destroyed by the sheer force of the being possessing them, and that the Eternal could also speed up this process if they wanted to.

And while Enor supposedly couldn’t feel any emotion, listening to Kaleth’s father must have gotten distracting.

Assuming that his father was dead made this easier, even though Kaleth had no way of knowing. The man deserved no sympathy, but it was still his father, and that made everything so much more conflicting than it should be.

“You ready?” Relioth asked. There was deep sadness in his eyes, something Kaleth wasn’t convinced Relioth could actually feel over something like this. But even if this was a lie, Kaleth could appreciate the sentiment.

He raised his index finger at Relioth, watching the fight. The aircrafts seemed to have mostly been defeated, but he knew more were coming their way. He could see Rayni and Mel helping someone climb out of one of the aircrafts, the woman looking incredibly confused and horrified.

Oh. And there it was. At least fifteen more were coming in from Aleara, most likely followed by many more to come. They needed to go. Before the others got overwhelmed.

“Now.”

Kaleth half expected Relioth to once again question him, but the Eternal did nothing of the sort. He just gripped Kaleth’s shoulder, took in a deep breath, and then they were on Enor’s ship. Right on the bridge. From here Kaleth could actually see his teammates, his friends, fighting for their lives through the huge glass window that made up most of the room’s walls.

Kaleth froze as he immediately spotted Enor, the Eternal’s back turned towards them with no other Eternal present to spot them. It was now or never.

Tightening his grip on the handle of his sword, Kaleth teleported behind Enor, raising his sword to stab it through him as soon as he materialized. But Enor was faster, meeting his sword with its other half.

Kaleth gritted his teeth, pushing back, already reaching for his shield. So it hadn’t gone as smoothly as he’d been hoping. That didn’t mean he was giving up.

“I thought it was odd you weren’t down there,” Enor said as he used his powers to push Kaleth away, but most likely not as far as he’d wanted to. Next to Kaleth, Relioth was standing ready, his golden scythe drawn. Wait, no, on second glance it was actually a spear now.

“And Tharos. Your apparent bravery is almost surprising.”

Relioth gripped the spear with both hands. “I always aim to surprise.”

He didn’t even let Enor say something before throwing the spear at him, managing to nick his arm as Enor dodged with robotic precision. Kaleth tried the same tactic again, teleporting right to Enor and delivering another blow, which Enor met with his sword again, straining as Kaleth put all of his strength behind it.

Relioth had meanwhile picked up his spear and was running at Enor, ready to stab him when Enor dodged once again, resulting in Relioth only destroying a control panel. He’d pushed Kaleth away to do this, but Kaleth managed to hit him in the face with his shield right after, making the Eternal stumble against the control panel.

Kaleth crossed their blades again, gripping the hilt of Enor’s weapon and pulling on it as hard as he could, trying to wrestle it out of his hand. Kaleth almost fell back when it came flying, but he managed to catch it, connecting the two parts of the sword together right after.

But when he raised his sword to finally kill Enor, he realized that the Eternal was on the other side of the room. With a force field surrounding him?

“I also aim to surprise at times.”

He waved his hand, making dark, reddish gas fill the room. Kaleth immediately held his breath and covered his mouth and nose with his hand, knowing more than well enough what to do in these situations, but it didn’t matter.

Despite not breathing any of it in, he almost immediately felt like his energy was being sapped away from him. And the gas itself wasn’t a gas. There were tiny pieces of something hitting his skin, and there was nowhere to go to hide from it. He couldn’t even see Relioth through the thick mist, he realized. Relioth who had been standing right next to him.

Kaleth reached out, shocked by how sluggish the movement was, but his hand only reached through empty air. He fell to his knees as he felt even the strength to keep standing left him, but he still kept his mouth and nose covered.

His mind was so dazed that he barely noticed that the dark mist was slowly leaving them now, revealing the control room as well as the view down on the landscapes around Aleara. And the rest of their group, doing their best to stay alive while they thought an insane number of enemy soldiers.

He struggled to get back up, to keep fighting, but he could barely move his arms.

He’d failed.

His eyes burned, but he didn’t dare let a tear fall. He wouldn’t give Enor the satisfaction. He needed to do it. To activate the device on his arm. This might be the only chance he got to ensure Enor wouldn’t get a chance to use him in his crusade.

Kaleth reached for it, knowing that just one touch with the right intentions would set the thing off. But he never made it.

Someone grabbed him from behind, pulling his arms behind his back painfully and dragging him to his feet. Kaleth growled, trying to get away, but he could barely move in the ironclad hold. His legs were shaking from the simple strain of just standing up.

“Othrin gas. I developed it just for this situation,” Enor told Kaleth, standing uncomfortable close. Kaleth wanted to kick him, but his legs wouldn’t move. The utter frustration of not being able to do anything at all made his eyes burn even more.

“Take Tharos back to his cell and put his rehabilitation program back on schedule,” Enor ordered his soldiers. Kaleth watched as they dragged Relioth away, feeling a pang in his heart even for him. If only his mind could clear a little. Maybe then he could teleport away from here. But it was so hard to focus….

“And bring Garen to the lab.”

Kaleth winced as the soldier holding him, a man much taller than him, began dragging him out of the room with embarrassing ease. Kaleth tried his darndest to get away, but the man just kept pulling him on, not letting him slow him down for even a second.

Kaleth shut his eyes, trying to get in touch with Mel, if only to say goodbye. They hadn’t actually done it despite Mel trying because Kaleth had just been so sure he would win. That he would be back with him in minutes. How could this have gone so wrong so fast?

He finally gave up, his brain still too muddled to focus enough to tell Mel anything. A tear rolled down his cheek then.

The room turned out to be much closer than Kaleth had been hoping. He needed more time to get together enough focus to fight, but by the time he was forced to enter the room, all he managed was hitting the person holding him with his elbow, which didn’t stop him at all.

He was forced to sit in a metal chair with far too many restraints, and no matter how much he fought back he still found himself cuffed to it, the othrin in the handcuffs doing very little at this point. Kaleth glared at the man cuffing his ankles to the chair legs, pulling on the handcuffs until the skin of his wrists bled.

There was a circular, metal contraption above his head, which the man proceeded to put around his forehead. Kaleth tried to lean away from it, but the circle was too wide to manage it. And once it was tightened, it was impossible to move his head anymore.

Kaleth tried his hardest not to show that he was terrified at the prospect of what Enor was going to do to him, but he was. He didn’t want to lose himself. His own identity was already such a fragile concept after finding out he was essentially just a copy, but this was going to basically destroy everything he was. And he wouldn’t even have the capacity to feel any way about it afterward.

Kaleth continued pulling on the cuffs with little to no effect. He could feel blood dripping down his fingers and onto the sterile white floor, but he could barely feel any pain, so he didn’t stop. It was all he had left. If he broke a wrist, so be it—what did it matter at this point?

Enor came strolling in with the sword in hand, studying it as if he was trying to mock Kaleth with it. Even though Enor kept trying to claim that he didn’t feel anything, Kaleth wasn’t buying that mocking him wasn’t the goal right now.

“I was never one for symbolism, but I am glad to have both halves reunited,” he said, stroking his hand along the blade.

“Do I look like I care?” Kaleth snapped at him, grabbing the chain of the handcuffs and trying to break it, even though he knew how unlikely that was to happen. He just needed to do something. His mind felt clear enough to focus now, but the handcuffs were keeping him too powerless to actually do anything.

This wasn’t like the time Relioth had put a suppression bracelet on him. These cuffs were leaving him only as much as he needed to have the Eternal bound by them survive and nothing more.

“Well, you should. You’ll be wielding it after I’m dead.”

Kaleth frowned, for a moment stopping his attempts at escaping. What was that supposed to mean?

Enor walked up to him, looking as uninterested as ever, the sword still in his hand. The lack of expression alone was enough to make Kaleth see past the familiar face of his father.

“I don’t doubt that you’ll kill me and absorb my power after the procedure is done. In fact, I want you to.”

Kaleth just stared at him. He certainly wanted to kill him right now, but why would he want that afterward? Wouldn’t he want nothing at that point?

“Which is why I’d like to explain myself to you before it happens.”

Kaleth glared. “I don’t care about—” The rest of the sentence was expressed only with muffled noises as suddenly he couldn’t open his mouth. He proceeded to swear at Enor as much as he could right now as he tried to fight the force holding his mouth closed while glaring at him with even more hate.

“Your opinion is irrelevant right now. You will change it once your emotions stop blinding you to the truth.”

Kaleth huffed, pulling on his chains again. If he could talk, he’d make a snide comment about listening to this being much worse than whatever procedure this would involve.

“It took me millenia to realize that it wasn’t Irif who was in the wrong,” Enor continued, putting the sword on the metal table in the middle of the room, right next to many machines Kaleth had no idea what the purpose of was. “It’s intelligent life in general.”

“You want to wage war on intelligent life?” Kaleth automatically repeated, even before he realized he could talk again. It was just so absurd to think about. “Why haven’t you started murdering everyone, then?”

Enor just stared at him for a moment, his face as blank as ever. Kaleth wanted to yell at him, but he wasn’t even sure what he’d say. There was no discussion with this person. There was no point in trying to change his mind, so what was there to say?

But something in Kaleth wanted to understand at least. Understand what the whole damned point of this was.

“You think too small, Garen,” Enor replied, tilting his head a little. “Do you truly think you are the only intelligent species in the universe?”

So this was even more insane than Kaleth had initially thought. It wasn’t just intelligent life on this planet. Enor wanted to destroy it everywhere in the universe. Kaleth didn’t know much about astronomy, but he did know that the universe was unimaginably large. How could Enor hope to find every civilization that might not even exist and destroy them?

“That’s what you need all those Eternals for.”

“Exactly”

Kaleth shook his head, snorting as he once again pulled on his cuffs. “You’re insane.”

“On the contrary. I am the only one who can clearly see what needs to be done,” Enor continued. He folded his arms, but his expression didn’t change at all. “Just think for a moment. Are you happy?”

“If you were dead, it would certainly be a start,” Kaleth muttered, crying out as Enor forced himself into his mind without any warning. Stabbing pain rippled through his whole body, but it left just as soon as it came, leaving behind a dull ache.

Kaleth blinked and swallowed, once again feeling dizzy and unfocused.

“As I suspected, the answer is no.”

Kaleth scowled. Of course he wasn’t happy. He had to deal with a millenia old war of beings who couldn’t deal with their own problems. He was about to become a shell of his former self because Enor wanted him to destroy all intelligent life in the universe, and the person he loved and everyone who he could call friends were either dead, or about to die because there was no way they could survive out there for long.

Kaleth once again felt his eyes flood with tears. But he wouldn’t cry. He wasn’t going to give the bastard the satisfaction of seeing him cry. Not now and not ever.

“Don’t you wish you could be free of all that pain?”

“Not if it means getting rid of everything else. Emotions are the only damned thing that gives life any kind of meaning.”

Enor almost looked like he pitied him. The fact that he couldn’t actually feel pity made it all the more infuriating and patronizing. “I used to think that as well. Now I know better. And so will you once we’re done here.”

He turned to the table, picking up a small device with a rod sticking out of it, looking suspiciously like a drill. Kaleth immediately started tugging on the cuffs again.

“Nature works in a perfect balance, until life becomes so intelligent it breaks it. It happened to my people, and it happened to yours. And it will keep happening, and millions will keep dying because despite all of our intelligence, we are still animals. Driven by base instincts.” He paused as he made his way towards Kaleth, the drill still in his hand. “Does that sound like a perfect world to you?”

Kaleth didn’t hesitate in rejecting all of this. “It sounds better than the idea of yours.”

Enor shrugged, turning the drill on. Kaleth flinched at the awful, whirring sound. All the times he’d thought about the actual way this would work, his mind had always gone to brain surgery, and Kaleth had quickly abandoned the thought process right after. But brain surgery seemed to be what was going to happen now.

“Once you take my power, you should be powerful enough that nothing will be a threat to you anymore, which is why I want you to kill me,” Enor said, completely unbothered. “All of my research is on the ship’s computers, as are many video logs that should answer any questions you might have after. And there is no need for both of us to be alive.”

Kaleth kept his eyes on the drill. The sight of it was sending him to the edge of a panic attack, but he couldn’t let the feeling consume him.

“How can you be so sure I’ll go along with this?” Kaleth asked, desperate to keep the conversation going. But unfortunately, this question wasn’t the right one to ask because Enor’s reply was incredibly simple.

“Because you are me.”

Kaleth jerked in his restraints, trying to free his head of the metal contraption clamped around his forehead as Enor made the drill fly above him. As the drill slowly floated to his skull, Kaleth could barely breathe. He couldn’t see it, but he could hear it practically screaming in his ear as it got closer and closer.

And then his eyes fell on the sword on the table as something Relioth had told him days ago came to his mind.

You wanna know how I figured all of this out? I just believed I could do it hard enough.That was all I needed.

And for the first time, in this moment of absolute desperation and horror, Kaleth found himself fully believing. He could stop Enor, even this weak and hopeless. He could. He could….

The tiny amount of energy he still had within him started to build up as the drill reached his hair. It built up more and more. The drill was almost touching his scalp. A little more….

The next thing he knew, one of his hands was free, holding the tip of his sword, which was now impaled through Enor’s chest. Kaleth stared at the scene in front of him in shock for a second before letting Enor’s energy flow into him, sighing and closing his eyes as he regained all of his power and so much more.

Kaleth easily ripped apart the remaining restraints, getting up to tower over the now kneeling Enor. Not even during his own death did he look like he was feeling anything. Gritting his teeth, Kaleth kicked Enor in the stomach, making him fall over and onto the hilt of the sword.

Enor gasped, trying to grasp at the sword to pull it out, but Kaleth easily stopped him, grabbing the hilt and continuing to draw all the energy Enor had left. There was so much of it, and Kaleth wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from taking it all in even if he wanted to.

Feeling Enor’s lifeforce disappearing, Kaleth finally pulled the sword out of his back, kicking him again to turn him over. He wanted to look in Enor’s eyes when he killed him.

But what he saw shook him to his core. These eyes weren’t Enor’s anymore.

“Son,” his father gasped out, coughing up blood as he put his hand over the hole in his chest. “Please….”

Kaleth took a step back, his grip on his sword loosening. He managed to get a hold of himself though. “No. Don’t you dare, Enor!”

He could still see the Eternal in there, but he had no idea if this was a trick or not. No, it was a trick, definitely. How dare he try something this low?

Feeling rage fill him, Kaleth raised his sword. Seeing the terror in his fathe—Enor’s eyes almost made him pause, but he pushed that away. He needed to finish this once and for all.

“Goodbye, Father.” And with that he stabbed his sword through Enor’s head, killing him instantly. Kaleth swallowed, looking away from the dead body of what used to be his father as an awful, sick feeling filled his heart. He pulled the sword out and left the room before the urge to throw up became overwhelming, taking in a few deep breaths to calm down himself and his stomach.

There was no time to stop and reflect on what had just happened yet. He had a war to win and people to save.