The Aperios (Children of the Sun Book 4)

Kaleth hated that he was sort of glad he had an easy excuse not to travel to Enor’s base on Mel’s back since Alor and Kara were going with them. But they didn’t have time to talk this out right now, and both he and Mel agreed on that, which meant that they now had a tense air surrounding them whenever they talked.

Kaleth hated it, of course, but they really had no time to deal with anything except for Enor right now, and on top of that, he didn’t think he and Mel would ever manage to find common ground in this case. Mel just didn’t have the capacity to not think about the details and only focus on the bigger picture.

Still, this made it hard to focus on only what he should be focusing on, which was their planned attack on Enor’s brainwashing facility. Kaleth had no idea what he’d find there, and he also wasn’t sure how they were going to destroy the place without killing more innocents, but if they could avoid it, they should—he agreed with that much.

The current plan was to just shut down the power generator—assuming there was one, but there probably was—and leave the building intact, so as to avoid what had happened earlier. If Kaleth had known that blowing up the Eternal creating facility would kill hundreds of Eternals, he wouldn’t have done it, but they hadn’t known.

Still, the idea of just destroying the facility and leaving no loose ends was appealing to at least some part of him. But these thoughts were easy to push aside when Kaleth reminded himself that Relioth would be all for this idea.

Is that it? Mel asked him when a large, concrete building came into view on the horizon. It was partially covered up by trees of the nearby forest, but despite this, Kaleth couldn’t help but notice that it looked suspiciously familiar.

Sure, at least on the outside, Carcer wasn’t exactly a uniquely designed building, but it still looked very, very similar to this. Or did this look similar to Carcer?

Kaleth shook his head. It was definitely the former. Relioth couldn’t come up with an original idea if he tried, which knowing him he wouldn’t.

It must be, Kaleth replied, trying to keep his emotions as level as possible. And Mel was clearly trying to do the same, which was awful to listen to. Mel was an emotional, expressive person. Hearing him be this neutral was...wrong.

But once again, they didn’t have time to deal with personal problems right now, so Kaleth would have to let this be for now. Or forever if this went south, but for once he wasn’t going to think about how they could possibly die today, and focus on the mission at hand.

It looks just like…. Mel fell silent, and combined with the fear Kaleth felt was coming from him, Kaleth was now even more worried than before. No wonder Mel would find a place looking like Carcer disturbing—Relioth had held him there as a prisoner for a good while and had forcefully looked inside his head as well. As if Kaleth needed more reasons to hate Relioth.

They all landed a good while away from the base itself, so as to avoid being seen, although Kaleth had no doubts they had been seen already. They needed to watch out for an attack from behind them, but he hoped he would at least hear any aircrafts before they got too close and at the very least teleport everyone to safety.

There were only five of them, with him, Mel, Alor, Kara, and Rayni. It did feel nostalgic, as Alor had said earlier, but only in the sense that this was all very familiar. If anything, all of this being so similar to what they used to do for Luxarx was putting Kaleth into an even worse mood, and he currently had better things to do than think about all the ways he wanted to punch Relioth.

They silently made their way as close to the base as possible without leaving the tiny forest around it, every so often looking up in case there were attackers right above them. It was unlikely, with the kind of hearing Kaleth now had, but with Enor anything was possible, including completely noiseless engines.

“There are ten guards here in total,” Kara whispered to Kaleth, who scowled at the concrete walls of the building in front of them. He leaned onto the tree he was standing behind and narrowed his eyes as he tried to find ten of them. He could feel a lot of Eternals around, but he couldn’t figure out a specific number, and the Eternals standing next to him were also putting him off the enemies’ scent so to speak.

But he believed Kara. She had always been better at reconnaissance than he was. What he did notice, though, was a suspicious lack of doors on this side of the building.

“Can you teleport us directly to a control room?” Alor asked him from the other side, making Kaleth turn around. “Is that where we’re going?”

“If there is a control room, yeah,” Rayni added, keeping her eyes on the structure. “I guess we could also damage the engine powering this place so it doesn’t work but also doesn’t blow up.”

She looked at all of them, a quizzical expression on her face. “That can be done, right?”

“Unless Enor put some kind of failsafe on it,” Kara replied, glaring at the building. “Who knows with him?”

Kaleth agreed with that, unfortunately. He had no idea what Enor might do next, and he sincerely hoped that the Eternal wasn’t expecting to be attacked like this in two places, but Kaleth had a feeling that Enor was prepared for it anyway.

As a loud rumbling of engines was heard above them, they all immediately crouched down to hide. Kaleth looked up to see a large aircraft, not at all like the ones they were used to seeing, which flew above them to the facility and began landing on the roof.

Except it didn’t land and continued going until it disappeared, followed by the sound of metal sliding on metal. There must have been some kind of mechanism for opening the roof, which Kaleth didn’t think was the case with Carcer.

“Well, that explains why there isn’t a door to be seen,” Kara whispered, getting up again. Yes, Kaleth supposed it did. There would be no need for doors if authorized Eternals could access the building via the roof, especially if they could turn into flying beasts. Though Kaleth doubted that was the case since none of the ones he’d fought had tried that before.

“We need to either somehow open that roof and jump down there—” Rayni began, immediately interrupted by Kara.

“I’ll break my legs, or die if we do that.”

“—or you teleport us inside.”

Kaleth grimaced. He wasn’t sure how well he could do that, aiming for a place he had no idea the layout of. He could open a portal that would lead inside the ground, which would no doubt kill anyone who tried to use it. And there was also the fact that using this much power might alert whoever was beneath their feet.

And there was no telling how many soldiers there were either, which certainly wasn’t helping. Enor must have found a way to disguise them in these bases because Kaleth could never pick up on their energy no matter how much he tried, even though he knew they were there.

It looks like Carcer, Mel told him in his mind, which made Kaleth frown at him, wondering where he was going with this. Maybe it’s the same as Carcer on the inside too.

Kaleth frowned more as he thought about this. He supposed it was possible. Carcer had definitely been far too big for what it was used for, which hadn’t stood out to him at the time, but was now odd in retrospect.

I suppose we’ll see what’s on the other side if I open a portal.

Mel gave him an encouraging smile. Kaleth didn’t need him to take off his mask for him to notice. He returned it, though he knew his smile definitely looked less genuine.

“Infiltrating the base from above is far too risky,” Kaleth said, turning to everyone else as he decided that there really was only one thing to do. “I’ll try to open a portal inside.”

Rayni nodded. “Right. Too bad we don’t actually know what’s inside, but we’ll improvise.”

“It’s not like we haven’t done that before,” Alor muttered, a small smile on his face. Kaleth almost told him to take his sentimentality elsewhere, but he managed to keep that snide remark to himself.

“Is everyone ready?” Kaleth asked instead, to which everyone nodded. He took in a breath, shutting his eyes, trying to imagine the endless corridors of Carcer. He really hoped this wouldn’t actually bring them to Carcer, though. No, he couldn’t let that happen. He just had to focus on wanting to get inside the place underneath them, and it would work.

He felt the usual draw of energy from within him as the portal opened, though it was considerably more than usual. Even though he had been trying to make it as smooth as possible, the portal still let out a deafening crack as it opened, making Kaleth wince as he heard the rustle of movement coming from around the building.

He opened his eyes, seeing the usual shimmering circle with an image inside. There was a white hallway, an exact copy of the ones in Carcer, except much less well lit.

Kaleth drew his sword, gesturing to the portal with his other hand. Maintaining it open was much harder than it should have been.

“Go!” he yelled, waiting for everyone to run into it before following after them, just as the soldiers had spotted him. He breathed out as the portal closed itself behind him, leaving them in relative darkness, though that would hardly bother him, even without his goggles. The only one who would be inconvenienced by it was Kara, who was already putting on her own goggles.

“So far so—” An alarm blared, interrupting Rayni, who proceeded to sign. “Of course.”

So at least this wasn’t Carcer, then. Kaleth hadn’t failed at getting them in, but they still had to figure out how to shut this place down without getting killed, or worse in his case.

“We need to move,” Kaleth said, taking his shield into his hand as well. He had a feeling he was going to need it if everyone here had that bracelet to make them somehow stronger than him. “They don’t know where we are yet.”

Hopefully.

Kaleth didn’t actually know which way to go, given that the place looked the same from all angles, so he chose a direction at random, clenching his hand around the hilt of his sword. He would be more on his guard this time, knowing what Enor had in store to some extent, at least.

He was paranoid enough here that every sound and movement not made by him immediately made him all the more guarded, but the next few minutes they didn’t actually come across anyone. Even the alarm inexplicably stopped after a while, which was incredibly suspicious in and of itself.

Kaleth gritted his teeth as they kept walking through the maze of empty corridors. He really hated that this was also a thing this place had in common with Carcer. It was definitely a trap, though he had no idea how it was going to turn into one.

His eyes widened as he felt the energy of what he assumed was a group of Eternals somewhere in front of them. He made the appropriate hand signal, getting his shield ready as they crept up to the end of the dark hallway, and presumably to the next.

He raised up his sword as he reached the edge of the wall, taking in a breath and stepping forward, ready to strike whoever was there. But what he saw next stopped him dead in his tracks.

All around them were cells with glass walls, as far as the eye could see in this new, much wider hallway. And in all of the cells were Eternals, dozens of them, all of which seemed to be hanging from chains affixed to the ceiling, unconscious, with something on their heads.

Looking around to make sure there was no one else here, Kaleth walked up to one of the cells, frowning at the circle of metal with blinking lights. This was exactly what Relioth had had on his head when Kaleth had begrudgingly rescued him from Enor’s ship. It was fair to assume that this was how Enor actually brainwashed them.

“This….” Alor said in a strained voice, clutching his head. Kaleth frowned at him in worry, turning around to properly look at him, watching him swallow thickly. “Um, I think I was here.”

“That would make sense,” Kara replied, shockingly gently by her standards as she put her hand on Alor’s shoulder.

“I’m, uh, I’m fine,” Alor continued, nodding, although he really didn’t look fine in the slightest. But what caught Kaleth’s eye instead was the pained look on Rayni’s face. She noticed him looking after a few seconds, and she shook her head.

“All of these people are in so much pain,” she said, scowling. “It’s awful.”

“You can feel it?” Kaleth looked around them at the captive Eternals again. They didn’t look like they were in pain, but then again, their faces were completely emotionless. In fact, they didn’t even look like they were breathing, which Kaleth knew wasn’t a requirement for Eternals to live, but they still did it automatically. But who knew what was happening under the surface?

“This is really distracting,” Rayni said, shutting her eyes and rubbing her forehead.

“We have to help them,” Mel insisted, unsurprisingly. But Kaleth agreed. These Eternals had bodies and were presumably not under Enor’s control yet. But they couldn’t just release them all. If they did, a lot more people could get hurt. There was no way to tell how far ‘processed’ these Eternals were, and once released they could be too confused to not hurt someone, or worse—too far along to not join Enor.

“We need to find the place controlling all of this,” Kaleth said, instead of wasting time arguing about this. “There has to be something.”

And so they once again started going in a random direction. Kaleth did his best to count the Eternals they passed, but he stopped at a hundred. It didn’t matter after that. There were too many to unleash onto the world, or into Enor’s army.

There was some strange buzzing all around them as they went farther, and some kind of machine kept whizzing back and forth above them. Kaleth couldn’t really tell what the purpose of it was, but he supposed this place must have been majorly automated. Even with Eternals for staff, it would still make no sense to make them run all of this.

Finally, Kaleth heard voices up ahead. He hoped that meant they were getting closer to some kind of control room. These corridors couldn’t keep going on forever.

When he saw two Eternals hurry across the corridor a while away from them, he readied himself to teleport again, but then he heard them talking. They were whispering, so it was a bit hard to figure out what they were actually saying, but what he managed to understand was enough. There was talk of an immediate evacuation.

Kaleth frowned. He had no idea how they could possibly evacuate this whole place quickly, let alone when they knew the place had been infiltrated, but he unfortunately didn’t manage to overhear anything else because the two Eternals got too far.

He wished he could question them, but there was no telling if they had those bracelets, and if they did, there was no way for him to overpower them.

Let’s follow them, Rayni told him, wagging her eyebrows at him from where she was leaning onto a wall a little behind him. Kaleth shrugged. It didn’t really matter since they had no better leads, so they might as well.

They walked down the winding corridor, more and more cells around them, but Kaleth couldn’t help but notice that as they went, fewer and fewer actually had Eternals in them. Had they evacuated this part, or had it not been used in the first place? Or had Enor known they were coming and started the evacuation much earlier?

Kaleth supposed that was possible, but that would imply that Enor either had so many soldiers by now that he didn’t think he needed a way to make more, or that he had another place to brainwash them, and Kaleth wasn’t sure which of these options he liked less.

Due to having to go relatively slow to stay quiet and for Kara to keep up, they eventually lost the two Eternals, but that didn’t matter because from here, Kaleth could hear distant, muffled voices and movement. They had walked in another corridor like all the others, except it was a little different once Kaleth looked closer.

Instead of glass cells, there were tall tanks full of clear liquid. They were empty otherwise, but Kaleth really didn’t like the looks of them. And clearly neither did Mel, if the wave of distress that came from him was any indication.

Kaleth wished he could spare the time to comfort him and ask what was wrong, but they really didn’t have the time for it. And he could feel they were close. They needed to keep going.

After a few more minutes of walking past the ominous glass tanks, Kaleth came to a halt as he felt a presence behind them. He teleported without thinking, stabbing the Eternal through her heart before she could attack anyone. But there were more coming right behind her and Kaleth doubted they could take them all on. They needed to run.

He stretched out his arm, stopping the ten Eternals coming their way with his mind, but he was immediately struggling. Throwing something or someone with telekinesis was fairly easy, but holding something for a prolonged period of time wasn’t, especially when the people he was holding in place were fighting back.

“Where the hell did they come from?” Alor exclaimed, drawing his sword.

“It doesn’t matter. We need to go!” Kaleth yelled back as he looked over his shoulder, gritting his teeth as the other Eternals kept fighting him. He wasn’t sure how long he could keep this up without making himself completely useless.

For once no one bothered arguing and they started running, Kaleth a bit behind them as he did his best to back away as fast as possible while also still hindering the enemy Eternals’ progress.

He could hear Mel call his name from the end of the corridor, which made Kaleth turn his head. Mel was waiting for him there, looking incredibly worried. Kaleth gritted his teeth harder, and stopped trying to keep the Eternals back, instead choosing to aim his telekinetic strength at the ceiling.

He raised up his arms, his sword still clenched in his fist, using all the power he had to break the ceiling and hopefully block the path with rubble.

Cracks started to appear soon after, widening and spitting down small rocks and dust, but the enemy soldiers were getting close now. They were almost at him, their swords ready to strike, when finally the ceiling gave in, huge pieces of it falling and breaking the glass tanks, adding whatever liquid they had contained into the mess of rubble. What he hadn’t expected though was for Mel to cry out as he was attacked by another group of Eternals.

Kaleth quickly rushed towards them, stabbing his sword left and right in an attempt to kill as many as possible before they could inject energy into themselves. However, he only managed to kill two of them before the remaining three activated their bracelets with a flash of multicolored light.

Kaleth doubted he could handle three at once, but he would have been willing to try if not for Mel being here. If there was one thing he wanted to do it would be to protect him, and so instead of fighting them, Kaleth pushed them back with a wave of his arm and put his sword back to its holster, grabbing Mel’s hand and running with him towards where the sounds of clashing blades and yelling were heard.

Soon they reached their goal, which turned out to be the control room they had been searching for this whole time, with only two enemy Eternals remaining. They had however used their bracelets, and one was about to overpower Rayni. Kaleth quickly closed the distance between them, pulling out his sword and stabbing it through the Eternal’s chest before quickly dispatching the other one too before she could react.

However, more were coming, and there were no doors to close to keep them out. Kaleth sighed, throwing his sword and shield onto the ground and stretching his arms towards the doorway, using all his strength to break the concrete of the ceiling.

Just as he saw the other Eternals reach them, the ceiling gave in and fell with a loud crash, blocking off the entrance with rubble and a cloud of dust. Kaleth coughed as it filled his lungs. Hopefully this would hold for a bit, but now they were sealed in. And he could already feel the Eternals on the other side trying to pull the mass of concrete away.

“This place is about to blow,” Rayni informed him, staring up at the large monitor above them. There was a countdown running. Five minutes before the base was destroyed. Suddenly, the evacuation made sense. Though it didn’t make sense for Enor to just destroy this place because Kaleth and the others had found out about it.

“Can you stop it?” Mel asked before Kaleth could, aiming the question at Kara who was furiously typing away at the keyboard of a computer in the corner.

“I can try but...I doubt it,” she said, not taking her eyes away from the screen.

Kaleth sighed, swallowing. They needed to try to do something to stop this. While Kaleth wouldn’t mind walking away from this too much since their mission was to put this facility out of business, Mel was right that they shouldn’t just let those Eternals die. It wasn’t their fault, and by this point Kaleth wasn’t sure if Enor hadn’t run out of soldiers to turn, so these people could have no connection to anything.

“Where’s the bomb?” Kaleth asked as a sudden idea struck him. It was probably insane, but the things he’d done over these last few months had objectively been all like that.

“It’s right beneath us, under a large layer of concrete,” Kara said, turning to frown at him. She looked suspicious of what he was planning, and definitely for good reason.

“Great.” Kaleth looked up at the screen again. Four minutes to go. “I’ll teleport it away.” He wished he could just send it onto Enor’s ship, but there was a reason he was keeping it afloat above Aleara. The whole city would be crushed if it were destroyed. “Everyone else, please keep the barricade intact.”

“You got it,” Rayni said, already heading over to the pile of rubble and reached out to it with her hand, her eyes flashing with energy.

As everyone else joined her, aside from Kara who was still typing away at the computer and also didn’t have psychokinetic powers, Kaleth picked up his sword. Relioth had shown him how to channel and amplify their power through othrin, but Kaleth hadn’t really managed to do it well before. And also he hated Relioth, and that made learning from him difficult.

He stabbed the sword into the ground as far as it would go, othrin slicing through the concrete with relative ease, making the surrounding ground crack. Hopefully, those cracks would get much bigger soon.

Ignoring the others’ talking, Kaleth closed his eyes and put his other hand on the blade of his sword, pushing as much of his power into it as he could. There was also some energy left over from the Eternals he had dispatched, which also helped since he still needed to have enough left over to teleport the bomb.

He gritted his teeth as his eyes snapped open again, and with as much focus as he could muster, he pushed the pent up energy from his now glowing sword into the ground, sending a ripple through it, breaking everything in its path.

He stumbled backward, grabbing his sword and shield which were about to fall inside the hole he’d created. There was now a crater in the middle of the room into which large pieces of concrete were still falling, along with computers, chairs, and tables. That had gone better than the last time he’d tried it.

He was pretty sure Kara had said something then, but he didn’t listen nor even turn around to look at her. All he could pay attention to was the huge, metal device with white blinking lights on it. This was clearly the bomb, although it didn’t look like any bomb he’s seen, if only due to its boxy shape. But that didn’t matter right now. What mattered was opening a portal around it and transporting it away.

And he already knew the perfect location—Relioth’s getaway planet.

Kaleth put the sword and shield away again and stretched his hands towards the bomb, struggling to open a portal. With how much energy he had left, this was going to be the last one he would manage to open for a while, so he had to get it right the first time around.

Thankfully it opened fairly quickly, although with a much louder crackle than usual, making Kaleth, and everyone else cringe as the air around the bomb literally split open, revealing the endless dunes of the alien world.

Kaleth felt his hands start to shake as he opened the portal wider, stretching it around the entirety of the bomb before quickly closing it and falling to his knees. The room glowed red as the monitor above started showing an error instead of a countdown, and Kaleth smiled to himself as he breathed hard from exhaustion.

He wasn’t given much time before Mel practically tackled him into a hug.

It was very odd to think this way given that this had clearly been the right thing to do, but Mel’s happiness made this whole thing seem worth more. Then he noticed that the pile of rubble that had been blocking the way in was gone now.

“What about the—”

“They, um,” Mel interrupted, looking sorrowful again. He hadn’t let go of Kaleth, though. “Exploded.”

Kaleth stared at him for a moment, trying to understand that. “What?”

He got up with Mel’s help, looking where the other man was pointing on the ground. There were three piles of ash on the edges of the crater he’d made. So there was only a limited time before those bracelets disintegrated the Eternals using them? That would explain why they only activated them when he was around.

Kaleth shook his head. Only Enor, and maybe Relioth, would think this was an acceptable tool to use.

“We should go check if there are more of Enor’s people here. Right?” Alor asked, to which Kaleth nodded. That was a good idea, and he couldn’t teleport them out of here anyway.

So this was done. He hoped Nira and the others were having an easier time on their own mission, though somehow Kaleth doubted it. Enor didn’t seem to make anything easy.

As he began walking out of the room, though, the voice of his father spoke behind him, stopping him dead in his tracks.

“We have business to discuss, Garen.”