The Return of the Gods (Children of the Sun Book 1)

As it turned out, there weren’t as many TVs and laptops in the mansion as Kaleth had been hoping, but there was a lot more jewelry. He didn’t remember Feria being interested in such things, but he supposed people changed. Or maybe she and her husband hadn’t known how else to spend their money, anymore.

Most of the gems on the rings and necklaces seemed to be rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. There was also a ring made of jade, which made Kaleth question why Feria, or anyone else for that matter, would like something this ugly, but he didn’t like jewelry in general, so maybe he wasn’t the best person to judge.

“So, this is everything we could find, excluding one TV we couldn’t get off the wall, and a laptop, which we kept in case we need one,” Rayni said, adding a box containing several watches to the pile of items in the trunk of one of Ramien’s cars. There were only two cars parked on the roof of the house, but both were relatively modern, meaning that they were still manually driven, but could fly. Kaleth’s father must have moved his antique ones somewhere else. “You know, I thought there would be more stuff.”

“Well, this has always been more of a summer residence,” Kaleth explained, shutting the trunk. “That’s why most of it is closed off. I imagine now that Edras and I are not children anymore, Ramien has little reason to stay here for longer periods of time.”

“What’s up with all the ridiculous security, then?”

“Father planned to hide here if there was another war,” Kaleth replied, and Rayni shrugged.

“Well then, this is a really bad time to give this house to you,” Rayni joked, making Kaleth sigh as he got into the car, choosing to sit in the back rather than having another fight with Rayni about who the better driver was. Not because he was admitting Rayni was better, they just didn’t have time for it, of course.

Rayni seemed very pleased by this and quickly started the car before Kaleth could change his mind. Thankfully she had enough self-control not to take off without Kara and Mel. Although Kaleth supposed Mel didn’t need a car to fly, which reminded him that Alor’s sunglasses were still on his nose. He raised his hand to take them off but then decided against it. The less his face was visible, the better.

When the door next to him swung open, he automatically looked to his right to see Mel, who seemed to be silently asking if he could sit down with a nervous expression. Kaleth just nodded at him and gestured to the empty seat next to him, which the Eternal gratefully took and started looking around with wonder in his eyes.

Most likely sensing Kaleth’s confusion, Mel explained: “I’ve never been in a car before.”

Rayni turned around to look at the Eternal. “Seriously?” Before Mel could confirm, she laughed. “Well, it’s not like you need a car, right?”

Mel didn’t reply, but he did smile at the joke, albeit a little hesitantly. Kaleth took that as a good sign. Maybe talking and being exposed to Rayni’s stupid humor could help him.

“So, where to first?”

Kaleth had thought selling a few things in random pawn shops wouldn’t be as tiring as it turned out to be, but then again, he hadn’t looked properly at all the things that were in the trunk.

To avoid looking too suspicious, they couldn’t try to sell more than a few items at each of the pawnshops, but Kaleth doubted they were very successful with that, anyway. They usually had to use some kind of intimidation technique to get a decent amount of money for the item they were trying to sell, and even then, what they got was often only a fraction of what they could have gotten if they had sold the stuff another way. However, that would take too much time. Not to mention that that way the money would be transferred to their accounts, and they couldn’t use an ATM without giving away their location.

Still, justifying the plan did very little to help Kaleth ignore the heat. About an hour in, he’d started to regret granting Rayni her wish to go somewhere subtropical because, as he’d found out too late, the car had barely functioning air conditioning.

He’d been forced to take off his suit jacket, which he didn’t like one bit. If he didn’t feel naked in just one layer of clothing, he would have ditched the waistcoat and tie as well.

Kara and Rayni didn’t seem too happy about the heat either, so much so in fact that when Kara yelled at her to go north, Rayni didn’t put up much of a fight and did as Kara had said. This was something that happened only about once a year.

The only one who didn’t care about the weather was Mel. Since the moment he had eagerly offered to count the money, that was all he had been doing, looking like he was whistling in his head as he methodically put together a hundred aurens, cut off a strip of paper, and glued it together around the stack of banknotes, over and over.

Kaleth couldn’t help but feel a bit jealous and also annoyed at how unaffected the Eternal was. He hoped Mel wouldn’t notice, but it was hard to hide it. Though it was strange that Rayni seemed to have the same problem with the temperature as Kaleth did.

For two hours now, Kaleth had been trying to get in contact with any of the remaining Luxarx agents, trying all the channels that he thought could still be in use, but so far he had been unsuccessful. Once he’d thought he’d managed to get in contact with someone, but he’d barely heard the person say a word before the transmission had cut off.

Nevertheless, he’d keep trying. If he didn’t, that would mean that they were alone in this, and he hated that possibility. Usually, the fact that someone as powerful as Mel was on their side would help their overall morale a great deal, but unfortunately, the side they were going up against had hundreds of such beings.

Kaleth sighed as he once again repeated his identification number into the goggles’ microphone only to receive no answer from the other side. He took the goggles off, wiping the sweat off his face.

“Still no luck?” Kara asked.

“No, but I still have quite a lot of channels to go through,” he replied, not even trying to sound hopeful or optimistic.

“You’ve been writing down which channels you’ve tried, right?” Kara said, to which Kaleth nodded, rubbing a hand over his face. His head hurt. “Give me the goggles and the notepad. I’ll try.”

Kaleth had nothing against that idea, so he did as she’d asked and stretched a bit, sighing in relief as his back popped. All that was left were about twenty paintings, most of which had belonged to his father for decades. Some of them had even been made by relatively famous painters. They should probably sell them to a gallery at least, but there were more pressing matters to deal with than preserving art.

Two hours later they were sitting in a diner—Rayni’s idea—having a very late lunch, finally done with the whole thing, which was good because at this point Kaleth was wondering if robbing a bank would have been easier than flying all over the Federation. He was glad he hadn’t counted the pawnshops they’d visited, otherwise he would have to question his life decisions again.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this kind of pie,” Mel commented as he peered curiously at Rayni’s plate, which was right next to him. His voice was clearly audible, despite all the diner noise.

Rayni was just finishing her cheeseburger, so it took her a moment to answer. Unfortunately, it was not long enough for Kaleth to realize that he was about to hear Rayni’s speech about how Artexian pie was superior to the Enorian versions again, and so he didn’t manage to stop her.

“This is Artexian pie—the best pie on the planet!”

“No, it isn’t,” said Kara and Kaleth at the same time. Kaleth didn’t bother looking up from his fries, but even like this, he knew Rayni was scowling at both of them. Kaleth once again repeated his identification, holding the goggles next to his ear. It was still less conspicuous than if he actually wore them, but he had received a few curious looks, anyway. Looks which he immediately replied to with a glare. That seemed to work with everyone except the waitress that had brought them the food. Kaleth huffed as he saw her wink at him from over the counter and focused on his task once more.

“Don’t listen to them, they just like to hate ’cause their crummy pie is worse, and they don’t want to admit it,” Rayni told Mel, and Kara scoffed. “You wanna try it?”

Mel seemed shocked as if no one had ever asked him a question like that—maybe no one had—and grinned at Rayni. “Thank you. I’d like that very much!”

Rayni grabbed Kaleth’s unused fork without asking and gave it to the Eternal. Mel looked a little startled by the agent’s lack of good manners, but he also seemed too excited to say anything about it.

Kaleth briefly looked up at Mel to see his reaction to the sugar-filled abomination that was Artexian pie. Judging by Mel’s wide eyes and smile, it was very positive. “Your pie’s really good,” Mel said, his grin even wider than before.

“Yep, that’s because my people make the best food,” Rayni said, smirking at Kara, but she just gave Rayni her best look of indifference and didn’t take the bait. “Anyway, since Mel agrees that this pie’s awesome, it’s two against two now.”

“But I haven’t tried Enorian pie,” Mel objected weakly. “How can I say which one I like better if I haven’t tried both?”

“Kara and Kaleth have no problems there.”

“I have tried your pie. It’s a hate crime against fruit,” Kaleth deadpanned, although he was just saying this to aggravate her. He did like Artexian pies, he just preferred the Enorian ones. This conversation made him think hard about when he had eaten any kind of pie last. He couldn’t remember.

“Three-three-seven. Why the hell are you talking about pie, Areon?”

Kaleth flinched in surprise before realizing the voice was coming from the goggles and feeling quite stupid in turn.

“Lenar, what’s your status?” he asked immediately, concerned by how shaky her voice was.

“Could be better!” she exclaimed, but the sarcastic tone that should have been there was lost in how heavily the agent was breathing. “Norto’s dead. It’s just me and Werana. We got ambushed by the EFP when we were flying back to Enbrant. I think we finally managed to lose them, but we need a place to hide.”

Of course Relioth would send the EFP after them. They might not be the best option when it came to taking out targets, but there were so many people working for them that it was almost impossible to run from them. In fact, one of their strategies was letting their target think they lost the EFP, letting the person hide somewhere, and then killing them discreetly. Kaleth hoped that wasn’t the case with Lenar.

“Fly to Terenth and contact me once you get there. I’ll tell you where to go from there.”

“Terenth? Okay, but it’ll take us at least twelve hours to get there. We’re on the other side of the Federation right now,” Lenar informed him. At least her voice was a little steadier now that she had a plan to follow

“Take your time. Just make sure you aren’t followed,” Kaleth replied. “Have you spoken to anyone else from Luxarx?”

“Just Seran. He seemed fine a few hours ago. We were planning on meeting him.”

“Focus on getting to Terenth, I’ll tell Seran to do the same.”

“Okay, uh, see you tomorrow, then, I—” Her voice cut off abruptly. Kaleth tried calling her again, but there was no answer. That was very concerning, but there was nothing he could do to help her. He would just have to assume he would hear from Lenar later, he supposed.

He lowered the goggles from his ear and noticed that everyone was watching him. Right, they had only heard half of the conversation. He quickly summed up the situation with as few words as possible, and before he even finished, he tried getting in touch with Seran.

“I tried calling Seran an hour ago,” Kara told him, frowning. “He didn’t answer.”

That didn’t sound good, but Kaleth continued his efforts anyway, putting the goggles closer to his ear again. After a few seconds, he got an answer. But it wasn’t from Seran.

“Hey, Kaleth!” said Relioth, the enthusiasm in his voice barely hiding the cold edge in it. Kaleth felt his blood run cold. “That meeting took a lot longer than I thought it would, but I’m still pretty disappointed that you didn’t wait for me.”

While Kara and Rayni looked concerned but curious, Mel looked like he wanted to run and hide. That helped Kaleth snap out of his shock.

“You murdered Seran, didn’t you?” Kaleth growled, ignoring Relioth’s comment.

“No, actually, he chose to go to prison instead,” Relioth replied casually as if Kaleth had asked how the weather was. “I let all of your fellow agents choose between going to prison until I win the war or being executed along with their families. You’d be surprised how many of you went with the first option.”

It wasn’t that surprising, to be honest, but Kaleth didn’t comment. “Why not just kill us?” he asked, truly not understanding why Relioth was making this so complicated for himself. He certainly had no problem with murder.

“I don’t like senseless killing, okay?” he replied, apparently offended.

“So, starting a war with Irithara is a good reason to kill so many people?” Kaleth tried to keep the anger out of his voice, but he couldn’t, not fully.

Kara and Rayni were trying to listen in from each side now. Kaleth wished he could increase the volume to make it easier for them to hear in the noisy diner. Mel just curled into himself a little more, no doubt able to hear every word.

“Well, yeah! It is a good reason.”

“No, it isn’t. You killed thousands of people just so you can kill more. And why would you even blame Luxarx for it?” Kaleth felt like yelling, but he couldn’t risk anyone overhearing this, so he had to resort to harsh whispers.

“Ah, well, I was sad to see the Flare blow up—I spent so much time on it—but Luxarx wasn’t needed anymore. You learned the truth or at least a part of it, you caught most of the Umbra, and I admit, even with their memories blocked off, I was never comfortable having Umbra work for me. So, it’s good to have that taken care of.”

So he’d killed them. Except for Rayni, who had such a steely grip on her fork it was starting to bend.

“You bastard,” she said, gritting her teeth.

“Oh, hey, Raynimara. How are you doing?”

“Better once I put a bullet in your brain,” Rayni growled. Clearly, it was time to step in.

“Don’t change the subject,” Kaleth said.

“Hey, she did that,” Relioth complained, and Kaleth shook his head. It was hard to believe he was talking to a millennia-old mass murderer, who was also in charge of the Enorian government.

“What exactly do you hope to gain from this?” Kaleth asked. “You’re going to let thousands, or, more likely, millions of people die just because you don’t like them?”

“I’m not going to bore you with the details, so the short version is that like, um, forty-seven thousand years ago, give or take, I can’t really remember anymore—the people who lived in Irithara before it was even called Irithara tried to commit genocide on my people. I’m just returning the favor. My beef isn’t with the mortals, though, but with the, well, immortals.” Relioth laughed a little. “Once all Eternals in Irithara are dead, I’ll get out of your hair.”

But…there wasn’t a civilization that far back. The oldest ones were barely ten thousand years old. Unless of course the Eternals somehow managed to get rid of all evidence of their existence. But that possibility raised even more questions.

“I’ll have to cut this short, there’s something I need to do. So, in the meantime, think over if it’s worth it trying to stop me, hm? If you promise to stay out of this, I’ll leave you and your teammates alone. That’s a pretty good deal, right? You don’t even have to help me.”

Kaleth exchanged looks with both Kara and Rayni. Seeing the raw determination and anger in their eyes, his heart swelled with pride. He would have agreed to Relioth’s deal if they wanted him to, but he was immensely glad that they didn’t.

“No,” Kaleth said.

Relioth sighed. “Yeah, I kinda expected that. You’re pretty predictable, ya know?” Kaleth barely stopped himself from letting out an aggravated sigh. “Anyways, if you’re going to pay for that food, I suggest you do it now ’cause in about a minute from now, you will want to be as far away from that diner as possible.”