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

It was as if time slowed down for a moment, and all Kaleth could do was stare at the plate of fries in front of him in shock. Thankfully, Rayni’s voice brought him out of it almost immediately.

“Run?”

“Run!” Kaleth agreed, slamming what money he had in his pocket on the table and sprinting out of the diner, quickly pushing past a few people in his way as he and Rayni, Kara, and Mel ran to the car.

They hadn’t parked right next to the diner because there hadn’t been an empty parking space, and so it took them precious seconds to get to their vehicle. Before they even took off, he could see two black cars in the distance. Judging by the speed they were going, and by the color, Kaleth deduced two facts: one—they definitely belonged to the EFP, and two—there was no way they could ever fly faster than the EFP, which meant that trying to lose them was hopeless.

Kaleth knew Rayni, though—the woman never gave up, even when she probably should.

Rayni didn’t fly up too far, just enough that she wouldn’t harm any pedestrians before she started zigzagging between the many tall buildings the relatively large city had to offer.

Kaleth hadn’t thought they’d last even five minutes since the EFP could watch where they were going from above the city, but Rayni managed to overcome this problem by flying through as many tunnels as possible. There weren’t that many, especially since they were now used purely as bike paths, but some of them were pretty long and enough to disappear for long enough that it would seem like they managed to hide somewhere, or possibly like they weren’t even in the city anymore. Especially if the EFP agents hadn’t seen them enter the tunnel.

After about twenty minutes of still not being killed or arrested, which was strange because Kaleth knew for a fact that even speeding should have alerted the city police, Kaleth was actually starting to think this would work, and he was quite the pessimist. He had to begrudgingly admit that Rayni was the better driver, but Kaleth would still not say that out loud. He’d never hear the end of it.

“Do you think we lost them?” Rayni asked, taking another sharp turn into a tunnel, making two cyclists unfortunate enough to be in the area almost fall off their bikes.

Kaleth expected the two EFP cars to show up right as she said this, but once they left the tunnel, there was still no one around. Rayni slowed down a bit but didn’t stop flying in places where cars generally had no business being.

“I haven’t seen them once in the last ten minutes,” Kara told Rayni, but her tone suggested she didn’t think the EFP was gone. Kaleth would have to concur. “But it’s odd that the regular police aren’t after us yet. Someone should have reported you by now.”

“I’m not endangering anyone,” Rayni scoffed, and Kara grumbled something under her breath.

“I agree that it seems suspicious,” Kaleth said, “but we can’t stay here.”

“So what? Fly to your place?” Rayni asked, already turning the car around.

“That’ll take hours,” Kara argued. “If the EFP are still after us, we won’t make it.”

“There is one of our safe houses a bit away from here,” Mel spoke up hesitantly. “We could hide there until they stop following us. They won’t be able to see it.”

Oh, right, Kaleth had completely forgotten that he had promised Mel to visit one of those. Now he felt like an asshole, but never mind that. A bit away from here wasn’t exactly precise, but Kaleth would assume that meant under thirty minutes, even with this car. Unless they got shot down as soon as they left the city, of course, that might put a damper on the whole plan.

“What do you mean they won’t be able to see it?” Rayni asked, shooting Mel a confused look.

“All of our safe houses are invisible. That’s why Relioth hasn’t found them yet,” Mel explained, sounding proud of that.

“Invis—” Rayni started to repeat with astonishment but gave up halfway through. “Okay, sounds good to me. Which way is it?”

“Southeast,” Mel answered and then frowned in thought for a second. “Which is, um….”

“This way,” Kaleth pointed to his right, making Rayni turn the car again before flying up above the city. He wondered where they even were. He was sure he knew which state they were in, but that was about it. He must have dozed off somewhere during the trip.

The EFP cars were still nowhere to be seen, which unfortunately didn’t have to mean anything. Kaleth wasn’t sure if not seeing them was better than the opposite. It was just like seeing a spider on the wall, looking away for a second, and then not being able to find it anywhere.

They very nearly made it. They were almost above the forest Mel had said the safe house was located in, but that was the moment the EFP appeared once more. Behind them, one of their jets appeared instead of the two cars from before, and before Rayni could react, the jet started shooting at their car’s engines.

And then they were falling.

It was little wonder modern cars had four engines, not three like this one did. If it had had four, losing one of them wouldn’t result in certain death. The car was spinning now as Rayni tried her best to force the two remaining engines to slow down their descent, but from this far up, Kaleth doubted it would change anything. But he wouldn’t say anything of course—those would be very unhelpful last words.

Kara was trying to think of a way to fix this, brainstorming ideas for Rayni to try, but none of what she had been suggesting seemed to work. Kaleth racked his brain, trying to come up with anything at this point, and suddenly he wanted to smack his forehead. Next to him was a being that could lift a car and fly away with it!

Oh, gods, he really was getting old.

He looked over at Mel to ask him to stop the car from crashing, but it seemed he was way ahead of him. The Eternal was about to open the door, so Kaleth pulled his goggles over his head, letting them hang from his neck so he wouldn’t leave them here, and quickly fastened his seatbelt, hoping that the wind wouldn’t be so bad for Kara and Rayni in the front seats.

When the force of the wind hit him, he decided it could have been worse. That didn’t mean it was in any way comfortable, though, and he automatically brought his hands up to shield his face. He was vaguely aware that the door Mel opened had broken off the car and was falling into the forest under them before, finally, their descent slowed down. They weren’t going up, but they would safely land now.

Kaleth looked out the rear windshield, only catching a glimpse of Mel’s wings and tail. He must have been supporting the car where the broken engine was, but Kaleth wouldn’t try to look. He didn’t need to fall out of the car.

“Okay, we’re definitely keeping him,” Rayni joked, letting out a relieved breath as she watched Mel on the car’s computer screen. It was still unclear how exactly Mel was holding up the car, but like this his entire back and wings were visible.

Good work, Mel, Kaleth thought, despite knowing that the Eternal wouldn’t hear it. He’d have to repeat it when they could hear each other again.

“Hate to ruin the moment,” Kara said, looking into the side-view mirror. “But that jet is still there.”

The moment she said this, the sound of gunfire was heard, shattering two windows, but miraculously not hitting any of them. They needed just a few more seconds to land, but of course, that was enough time for the EFP agent that was shooting at them.

They were just a bit above the ground when Kaleth heard Mel cry out, and then the car fell down the rest of the way. Kaleth groaned as he hit his head on the window on his right and shook his head to clear it.

Right, Mel was hurt, he remembered when he heard another pained cry and jumped out of the ruined vehicle, quickly making his way to where Mel had fallen. The Eternal looked okay for the most part, although it was obvious he had injured his left front leg with how he was trying to avoid leaning on it as much as possible as he made his way toward Kaleth.

Only then did Kaleth notice the state of his left wing. The thing was in tatters, shredded by the jet’s machine gun, but it didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore. There was blood on it, but it was already drying, which meant that Mel was healing it somewhat. It still looked horrific, though.

“It-it’ll heal,” Mel assured all three of them, pain clear in his voice when he saw their horrified faces. “The s-safe house is just over that hill.” The Eternal turned his head towards the hill on his right and started limping towards it with impressive speed.

Kaleth looked at their car, remembering that they had left about four thousand aurens in the trunk, but Rayni was already running towards it before he could do it himself.

The sound of car engines made all of them look up, but they couldn’t see much of anything through all the pine needles and branches, just a silhouette. This made Kaleth even more on edge, but at least they wouldn’t be visible to the EFP agents, not until they landed in the forest at least.

Between the three of them, they only had one gun. He wished he had brought his sniper rifle. He hadn’t done so because bringing it anywhere was bound to draw attention, but since the EFP had found them anyway, it wouldn’t have mattered. He hoped Mel was right, and the safe house was as close as he had said, otherwise, this wouldn’t end well for them. This particular forest offered little opportunity to hide. The tree trunks, for the most part, while numerous, were too thin to hide behind, and there were very few bushes and larger rocks.

They followed Mel, running over a narrow forest path and up the hill as fast as they could, which was still nowhere near as fast as Mel was running. Kaleth supposed having four legs was a huge advantage, even if one of them was injured.

When they were about halfway up the hill, Mel had already reached the top and was now waiting for them to catch up while looking up at the trees, his head slowly moving as the sound of the EFP cars’ engines got closer and closer. The Eternal could most likely tell exactly where they were just by listening, which meant the EFP agents were almost there.

Finally, they got to the top of the hill, just as they heard a couple of branches snap and the EFP cars started descending next to theirs. Kaleth wasn’t certain they managed to disappear behind the hill fast enough, but since it would be almost impossible to set down a car on such a steep surface, the people after them would have to get over the hill the same way as they had or fly up again and land on the other side of the hill. Either way, they had a head start and with a bit of luck enough time to disappear before the EFP could locate them.

“The entrance is between those two trees there,” Mel told them as he sprinted down the hill. It wasn’t clear which trees he was referring to, but they didn’t have the time for questions like this, so Kaleth ran after him without a word.

The hill was even steeper from this side, and it was a miracle that none of them had fallen on the way down. If there hadn’t been the trees they could grab onto to regain balance, he seriously doubted they would have managed this without an injury.

Once they reached the trees Mel had mentioned, they watched as the Eternal stretched out his right claw and pressed it down on the ground in front of the two trees. His eyes glowed, but nothing happened. Kaleth saw Rayni nervously look back at the hill and did so as well. There was no one there just yet, but that didn’t help him relax. He was about to ask Mel if there was something wrong when a metal circle, much like the one that led to Carcer, appeared where Mel’s claw was. He quickly removed it when the circle divided itself into four parts which quickly slid out of sight, revealing a dark hole big enough for even Mel to fit through in his current form.

Since Mel looked like he would pass out from exhaustion and pain any second now, Kaleth told him to jump down first. Mel looked like he wanted to protest, but did as he was told without an argument, the others following right after. When Kaleth jumped in as well, he looked up at the entrance, but before he could ask how they were supposed to close it again, it slid shut once more. There must have been a motion sensor built into the mechanism of the door or something to that effect.

With that done, Kaleth looked at the others. There would have been complete darkness in the safe house, but as it only became now apparent, Mel’s whole body was glowing, especially in places where he was injured. If there had been any other light source, Kaleth was sure it would be barely noticeable, but right now he shone like a glow stick.

“Why are you…glowing?” Kara asked, sounding amazed. It was quite spectacular how from beneath every one of Mel’s scales shone a soft blue light, which illuminated the other scales around it. However, the light wasn’t very strong, which made the scales themselves seem even darker than usual. His wing looked much better already, though there were still large holes in it, and it looked like it would still take some time to heal completely.

Finally, Kaleth looked at Mel’s face. It seemed he was barely holding his eyes open at this point, but Kaleth wasn’t focusing on that. They weren’t just glowing—the glow was flowing up out of his eyes in flickering tendrils and then dissipating into nothingness when they got too far away from their source, randomly changing directions as they went. It looked like…well, a flame.

“It happens when we use our powers,” Mel explained to Kara, yawning slightly and clearly trying his best to stay awake. “It’ll stop when I finish healing myself.” Then he shrunk away a bit. “W-would you mind if I slept for a bit? It should speed up the healing a lot.”

Kaleth hated that Mel thought he had to ask if he could do something like this, especially since he had to heal the wing because of them, but since the Eternal was expecting an answer, he had to give him one.

“Of course, Mel, whatever you need,” Kaleth told him, smiling slightly. Mel only looked up at him gratefully before curling up into a ball and falling asleep almost immediately, snoring softly. Kaleth wondered what Mel would have done if he had told him he couldn’t sleep. He was quite sure the Eternal wouldn’t have been able to stay awake, regardless.

“He’s so cute, right?” Rayni said, grinning widely at how Mel had encircled his body with his tail and put his uninjured wing over himself as if it were a blanket. Kaleth didn’t comment on what Rayni had just said, mostly because he couldn’t bring himself to outright deny it, while Kara groaned. “I hope I’ll figure out how to turn myself into that, too, soon.”

Kara took her phone out of her pocket and turned on its flashlight, using it to study their surroundings. When Rayni did the same a second later, Kaleth put his goggles over his eyes and turned on the two flashlights instead. He didn’t even know if his phone still worked after his fall in Carcer because he hadn’t even thought to check it yet, but two flashlights were better than one, anyway. They should probably get rid of their phones, also. While almost no one could track them, not even Luxarx, it was still an unnecessary risk.

Kaleth frowned as he looked around the small room. There had to be a way to light the room around here somewhere—there had to be a power source here, otherwise whatever cloaking device was hiding the entrance wouldn’t be operational. Unless this was science beyond his understanding that didn’t require a power source, of course.

According to his goggles, the walls and ceiling were made of thick steel, and they were completely featureless. The room itself wasn’t as big as Kaleth had imagined it would be—his office at Luxarx had been larger—but he supposed that made sense since the Umbra worked alone, so there wasn’t a reason to make their safe houses big enough to hide whole groups.

There was something that looked like a very large computer screen on the wall to the right, but it was either turned off or broken. In the corner on the other side of the room, there was a glass cylinder, tall enough to touch the ceiling, with four metal columns attached to the device from the outside. Kaleth guessed this was the machine Mel had talked about before.

The rest of the room was filled with metal crates of various sizes, most likely containing supplies. It would be good if some of those supplies were weapons, but Kaleth wouldn’t hold his breath. Mel wouldn’t have let them spend half the day flying all over Enoria if they could just come here and take what they needed.

“Anyone see any wires?” Rayni asked, directing the question mostly at Kaleth because he was the only one who would be able to find something like this. He couldn’t use the goggles to find wires exactly, but he could find electricity. He just hoped that the scanner would see behind the steel walls. He had never tried something like this with such an early model.

For the most part, the scanner found nothing at all, and Kaleth was about to tell Rayni as much, but then he noticed a bright yellow line behind some of the crates.

“Over there,” Kaleth told the other two, pointing at where the electricity was and walking there, pushing the crates out of the way as he went. Some of them were incredibly heavy. He wondered what was inside of them, but he would check after they figured out how to turn on the lights.

Once the crates were out of the way, it became clear why he had been able to only see the tiny part of the wire. There was a plastic, square panel with two buttons on the wall, but between the wall and the board was a small amount of space where the wires leading into the panel were visible.

“Oh, good, more weird writing,” Rayni complained, glaring at the words written above each button. “What does this say?”

For a moment, the writing looked blurred to Kaleth. He narrowed his eyes in an effort to make it look clearer. Immediately a dull pain started throbbing in his head, just like the first time he had tried this, but at least now the words made sense to him.

“The button on the left is labeled power on-slash-off,” Kaleth said, “and the one on the right is….” He did a double-take and read it again two more times just to make sure. “Self-destruct, apparently.”

Kaleth put his hand on the panel, letting his thumb hover over the power on/off button for a moment, wondering if perhaps the labels had been switched to trick someone who shouldn’t be here. After a second he decided that this thought process was ridiculous and pressed the button. Above them, long, shining rectangles built into the ceiling came to life, lighting up the whole room with white light. He hadn’t noticed them at all before.

Kaleth took off the goggles and blinked a few times to adjust his eyes to the new light source. Kara and Rayni stopped arguing and looked around, pocketing their phones. There wasn’t much to see that they hadn’t yet, although it was now very noticeable that there wasn’t any furniture in the room. Kaleth supposed Eternals didn’t need that. Mel certainly looked very content where he was sleeping on the floor.

“Well, that’s better,” Rayni said happily and turned around after hearing a quiet beep. “Oh, hey, the computer thing is doing something.”

Despite what Rayni had said, the computer wasn’t actually doing much. Kaleth doubted it had done more than just turn itself on. In the top right corner of the screen was an emblem—a silver, five-pointed star with crossed, black daggers, and in the middle was a long, white box. He’d never seen an emblem like this before, but Kaleth assumed it was Mereria’s.

“Let me guess, we need a password,” Rayni said with annoyance and tried touching the screen. It didn’t respond at all to this. There wasn’t a keyboard in sight, either, so Kaleth didn’t know how they would enter the password even if they knew it. “I feel like I should know this, but I don’t.”

“Maybe Mel knows it,” Kara replied, but she seemed skeptical. Kaleth wondered why that was. Mel worked for Mereria, or at least he had. Why wouldn’t he have access to something like this?

“You’re our tech expert. Can’t you figure something out?” Rayni asked Kara, who let out a long-suffering sigh. Kaleth remembered a time when Kara would have started yelling at whoever asked a question like this. Maybe she had held back because Rayni didn’t seem like she was saying this just to provoke her.

“I can’t be an expert in something I’ve never seen before,” she replied, gesturing at the computer screen with both her hands.

“C’mon, it’s obviously a touchscreen. How different can it be?”

“It doesn’t respond to touch, and its UI is in a language no one has ever seen before,” Kara pointed out, her expression changing suddenly from annoyed to thoughtful. “I wonder what programming language they use.”

“Take it apart then. There must be some tools around here,” Rayni suggested, and Kaleth, not hearing Kara refusing to do this, saw this as a good moment to step in.

“No one is taking it apart until we know for sure doing that won’t blow up this entire room,” he said, ignoring Rayni’s complaints. He wasn’t sure if that was possible, but no one was telling him otherwise. “Let’s check if there is anything useful in these crates. When Mel wakes up, we’ll ask him about the computer.”

Rayni muttered something about Kaleth being a buzzkill, but Kaleth pretended he hadn’t heard it and walked over to the nearest crate, taking off its lid.

There was a surprising amount of junk and canned food—all of it expired, of course—and bags of sugar. The fact that the Eternals were beings made up of energy apparently changed nothing about needing food. Or maybe they just liked eating only because of the taste, and they didn’t actually need it. They really didn’t know much about them, did they? Except that they were powerful, and most were hostile. He hadn’t even asked how to kill them yet. Hopefully, asking that wouldn’t upset Mel.

“Oh, look, I was right, there are tools here,” Rayni announced victoriously from somewhere behind Kaleth. Kara was going through something that resembled computer parts, except unlike normal ones they weren’t green, but grey, they were much thinner and had no metal bits stuck to them. Kaleth had no idea what any of it was called, or what it did for that matter, and he did not care. Instead of the usual, there were hundreds of thin golden lines engraved into the surface of the computer parts with no obvious pattern. Kaleth didn’t know what to make of it, but Kara seemed very interested.

In the last three crates, there were various weapons, but unfortunately, not ones that would be very useful to them. Not only were they melee weapons, but some of them looked incredibly old. Many of the swords and daggers were rusted, bent, or even broken, especially the ones towards the bottom of the crates. He couldn’t see the ones at the very bottom, but Kaleth didn’t want to look enough to risk cutting himself.

Deciding that a knife could be useful at close range, he looked at the newest-looking ones. There were quite a lot of them, but only a handful came with a sheath. Since he didn’t want to lose the knife as soon as he put it in his pocket, or cut himself, or both, he had to choose from those. To make the choice easier for himself, he just picked the sharpest knife he could find and didn’t focus on what it looked like.

“All those cool swords and you pick a knife?” Rayni exclaimed in disbelief and pulled out a relatively preserved longsword, brandishing the weapon around in a way that suggested she had no idea how to use it. Although she definitely knew how. Not once in his sixteen years of working for Luxarx had Kaleth used a sword, so it was an unnecessary skill anyway, but they’d been required to know it.

“Put the thing down before you hurt yourself,” Kara said with disapproval. “You don’t even know what to do with it.” As if just to prove her point, Rayni swung the sword around to show Kara that she knew exactly what to do and dropped it, making everyone cringe at the loud noise the sword produced when it hit the concrete floor. The noise also woke up Mel who jumped halfway up to the ceiling, looking startled and disoriented, staring with wide eyes.

“I-is everyone okay?” he asked, clearly worried, moving from his corner to the one they were in with a single leap. They should be asking if he was okay instead. He seemed to be walking normally now, so his leg was at least mostly healed, but Kaleth couldn’t see his wing well.

“Don’t worry, Rayni’s plan failed. We can still hear,” Kara said, her sarcastic tone turning into an angry one by the end of the sentence. She glared at Rayni, who had the decency to look ashamed.

“Uh, sorry?” Rayni said, shrugging apologetically. That was more than Kaleth had been expecting of her. “On second thought, swords are stupid. A knife is a way better weapon, obviously.”

Kaleth had no idea why the whole exchange didn’t make him want to hit his head against a wall repeatedly. Instead, he felt the urge to laugh. Feeling the right corner of his mouth twitch, he quickly stopped it before it could escalate and focused on Mel again.

“Is your wing healed?” he asked. Mel blinked at him as if he had forgotten his wing had been torn apart by bullets not even an hour ago and turned his head to assess the appendage.

At first, he was careful, stretching the wing out slowly. He barely fit in the room even with only one of his wings stretched out. Probably another reason why there was no furniture. Once the wing had reached its full length, Mel flapped it a few times, increasing the speed until Kaleth was starting to think the Eternal was trying to knock them off their feet by the force of the wind he was creating. But then Mel folded the wing again and looked at Kaleth happily, swishing his tail around.

“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he announced unnecessarily.

“Okay,” Kara said, looking at the ceiling as she seemed to collect her thoughts. “If we want to stand a chance in a fight, we need to get to Korhon to get those weapons, but our car’s totaled, so we need a new one. We also need to avoid the EFP.”

“Right, or we could just ask Mel to give us a lift,” Rayni suggested, looking at the Eternal expectantly. Mel looked like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say but nodded anyway.

“You can carry all of us?” Kara asked, frowning skeptically. Mel nodded again, this time adding a smile.

“He can pick up a car,” Kaleth reminded her, and Kara’s eyebrows rose in astonishment. Right, Kaleth hadn’t told them how they had ditched their cars.

“Awesome!” Rayni said with excitement. “Can we breathe fire, too?”

“Um, yes?” Mel answered the question uncertainly, most likely wondering why Rayni had asked about it.

“How is that possible?” Kara asked, but all she got in reply was a shrug. Well, if Mel himself had no idea how his powers worked, there was probably no point in asking him how he was able to change forms or lift so much weight, which was a shame, but it also wasn’t important right now.

“Okay, so we just open the secret door and hope the EFP guys aren’t there anymore?” Rayni asked.

“You don’t have to do that,” Mel told them. “You can check what it looks like outside with that.” He turned his head towards the computer screen. “You just have to ask it.”

Oh, so the computer was controlled using voice commands. That would explain why it hadn’t responded to touch, but this also meant that they wouldn’t be able to use the device on their own unless they learned the language the Eternals used. If they could have controlled it by touch, they might have gotten somewhere by randomly pushing buttons. But as long as they had Mel with them, this wasn’t a problem, Kaleth supposed.

“Obsere, ostende mih extra,” Mel told the computer, and the login screen disappeared, replaced by six camera feeds showing what it looked like outside around the entrance to the safe house.

It was bizarre, hearing a language Kaleth had never heard before, yet understanding every word.

“Well, that’s handy,” commented Rayni, studying the screen with her nose almost touching it, looking for any sign of the EFP agents still being in the area.

“What did you say?” Kara asked him.

“I nicely asked it to show me what it looked like outside.” No kidding. Kaleth had never seen anyone using the word please when telling a computer or a phone to do something. If Mel told him that their computers were sentient and had feelings that could be hurt, he would have most likely just accepted it with no difficulty, but he highly doubted that was the case. Creating a computer that could refuse to do what it was asked to do just because it felt like it didn’t seem like a good idea at all.

“So you don’t need to know a password to use it?” Kara asked, clearly fascinated by the piece of technology in front of her. She looked like she wanted to bring the computer back to the mansion with her, but Kaleth didn’t see that happening, if only because of its size.

“Only our commanders know the password,” Mel said, his voice changing from overly positive to fearful. “I-I don’t know what it’s for.” Kaleth grimaced. This not only made him angry because of whatever negative reinforcement techniques Mel’s superiors had used to make him react like this to just a mention of them, but he also felt guilty because of what Mereria might do to Mel for defending Kaleth from her.

“I don’t see anyone,” Rayni said, stepping away from the computer. “So, they either gave up, which is doubtful, or they went further into the forest. I say we get out of here before they come back.”

“Agreed, but, uh, Mel, didn’t you want to retrieve a uniform?” Kaleth asked the Eternal.

“Oh, right,” he replied, apparently only now remembering his earlier request. He didn’t move, and it took Kaleth a few seconds to realize he was waiting for him to say he could. Kaleth waved his hand towards the strange device behind him, and Mel trotted over to it.

Kaleth expected him to change forms, but when Mel stopped in front of the glass tube and it opened, he stepped in as he was. Somehow he managed to stuff himself inside all the way, only struggling to pull in his wings fully. When he finally settled in the machine, the piece of glass acting as a door closed itself behind him, and then the device scanned him with a ray of green light. At least Kaleth assumed that was what had happened.

A second later, there was more of the green light, except this time it passed by a lot slower. Of course, that didn’t mean it was in any way slow. It took the light about five seconds to get from the top of the device to the bottom. At first, Kaleth didn’t see the difference, but once Mel succeeded in leaving the glass cylinder without shattering it, he didn’t understand how he could have missed it.

To put it simply—Mel now had armor. Kaleth wouldn’t call it a uniform, and it didn’t look all that hard to pierce either. In fact, the black plates covering Mel’s chest, neck, legs, and wings looked like they were made out of expensive, non-reflective plastic. He was sure that wasn’t true, though. Mel’s people didn’t seem like the kind that would create a machine that could materialize armor simply for cosmetic purposes. The plates were most likely made out of some strong synthetic fiber Kaleth had had no idea existed.

But speaking of cosmetic purposes, if Mel hadn’t looked like a lost, overgrown puppy half the time, the armor would have made him look quite intimidating. There were two emblems on the armor—one on the right shoulder and one on Mel’s chest, both Mereria’s star. Under the plates, Mel’s back and abdomen were wrapped in dark cloth that started as a thick strip around the back of his neck that disappeared under the first chest plate. The horns on the Eternal’s back were now hidden under the cloth, but they were somewhat visible, anyway.

“It’s like a….” Kara paused, probably looking for the right words. “Really, really advanced 3D printer.”

“Holy crap,” Rayni said, looking Mel over, impressed. “I should get this, too. It comes in normal sizes, too, right?”

“You can get it if you want to,” Mel replied, smiling. “It should recognize you.”

Rayni raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything as she walked into the glass cylinder. The door slid closed, and the same process repeated itself. When Rayni exited the device, Kaleth was somehow surprised by how different and yet the same Rayni’s uniform looked compared to Mel’s.

It consisted of black plates as well, and over the armor was a long black cloak that, to be honest, looked very impractical in a fight. Over Rayni’s head was a hood which was also a part of the cloak, and the lower part of her face was covered by the same black cloth, which made her face almost completely hidden.

She looked like some kind of old-timey assassin. Fitting for an Umbra, Kaleth supposed.

“Hah, awesome,” said Rayni, pulling the hood and the cloth over her mouth down, revealing her face again. “I look like a proper superhero now.”

Kaleth shot her a look of irritation, which Kara seemed to mirror.

“Or a supervillain,” Kara shot back, and Rayni scoffed.

“I’m too nice to be a supervillain.” Without another word she climbed on Mel’s back, petting his forehead. “C’mon.”

Kaleth and Kara sat down behind Rayni, and Mel crouched down under the now-open exit.

“Um, watch your heads,” Mel warned them before jumping out with surprising elegance, running eastward with incredible speed.