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

When Kaleth entered his apartment, he immediately headed to the living room and didn’t pay attention to anything else. He didn’t want to give himself enough time to start feeling nostalgic as he went through the metal box he stored all of his memorabilia in, including the bullet. He ignored everything inside the box that wasn’t that as he rummaged through it. Or at least he tried to. When he came across a picture of Teran, he took a moment to look at it, feeling more and more guilty. He hadn’t really checked if he was okay after telling Kaleth the name of Relioth’s base, or tried to thank him, for that matter.

Still, he had to be alive, at least. Teran was powerful, and his sudden death would be all over the media. The possibility that he had been possessed was also not totally out of the question, but Kaleth quickly swept that thought away as he finally found what he had come here for.

Looking at the bullet made him feel angry enough to grit his teeth, but at least he found some solace in the fact that soon enough he’d be returning it to its rightful owner. He glared at the bladed cross intently. He hadn’t known what it symbolized back then, and when he had looked it up and seen the symbol in religious texts, he still hadn’t connected the dots. He had just assumed the people he had worked for used it randomly because it looked nice.

Of course, now he knew better. It was quite odd for Relioth to still use this symbol, though. It was supposed to symbolize the unity among the three most powerful Eternals—the top blade was supposed to be Enor’s, the one on the bottom belonged to Relioth, and the two remaining were Mereria’s daggers. Sometimes the cross was also a part of Enor’s shield—the Lightward, or Luxarx. Kaleth was sure the weapons had names too, but he didn’t remember them.

Mereria had no problems distancing herself from the other two, judging by the symbols that Mel had on his armor, so why didn’t Relioth just replace the cross with the scythe he supposedly used? Kaleth wondered if Relioth even had one, given how impractical a weapon like that would be, but knowing him, he probably did have it. He had always been a style-over-substance kind of person.

Kaleth clutched the bullet in his hand, getting up and leaving the apartment without looking back. He would most likely never see it again, but he didn’t even stop to think about it. He had roughly an hour to get to the Citadel, avoid the EFP, who was definitely going to be there already, pick the best location to shoot from, and then get to that location.

Once in the car, he pushed the othrin bullet into his sniper rifle’s magazine. As soon as it left his fingers, he realized he felt oddly drained. Though he supposed that was to be expected after holding othrin in his bare hand.

Kaleth shook his head to clear it and then loaded the gun and took it apart. He put the parts into a thick, blue plastic bag he had found in the car’s compartment box. It almost felt wrong to do this to a weapon he’d owned for half of his life, but unfortunately, the box it was usually in was still in his car, which was parked near Carcer. Scowling, he put the bag on the passenger seat and took off.

The drive took only about fifteen minutes, but he could have gotten there faster if he hadn’t bothered with speed limits. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t care, but right now he couldn’t afford to draw attention to himself. It was enough that the car had manual controls. If he wasn’t careful, he would get arrested even before he got to the Citadel.

Once he reached the center of Enbrant, he set the car down a bit away from the Citadel, grabbed the bag, and started walking toward the huge, imposing stone structure. When it had been built a thousand years ago, it was the tallest building in the world, but now it looked tall only compared to the other buildings in the center of Enbrant. And since most of those only had two or three stories, it made finding a good vantage point very difficult.

Kaleth scowled at the dragon statue on top of the biggest dome of the Citadel. Now that he had seen the real thing, he couldn’t help but criticize how inaccurate the statue was. It had two tails, an incredibly long neck, and two sets of wings. Even though he had only seen one Eternal in this form, he still highly doubted that the differences between them were this dramatic.

As he walked, he compared the three options he had picked back at the mansion. They were all visible from where he was standing close to the Citadel, which meant that they should all offer an unobstructed view of the lectern in the middle of the square surrounding the structure.

He wished he could just let the car hover at a reasonable distance from the Citadel and shoot from there, but since this had become such popular a method of assassination, it was now illegal to fly above places where almost any public event was taking place. If someone tried, they’d be forced to land, and if they ignored that, the authorities would shoot the car down.

The closest building to the Citadel he could shoot from, only about a minute of walking away, was a three-story house, which was comprised of a shop and two apartments above it. The problem was that it was so close to the Citadel that there was no chance of escaping. Not that his chances were good, to begin with, but there was no need to make the situation worse than it needed to be.

The next one was a relatively modern office building, which was almost five times farther, but it offered a great view of the lectern where Relioth would stand. However, getting in and not being discovered would be very difficult.

The last, and farthest away, was a cathedral—a large structure covered in gold plates with a crimson dome making up most of the roof. The dome itself was surrounded by four tall spires, each containing a massive bell. Oval stained-glass windows glistened in the sunlight and the gold walls made the cathedral look like it was glowing, which Kaleth supposed had been the idea when it had been built.

The distance made Kaleth worry that he would miss, but there was something incredibly enticing about killing Relioth from one of the temples dedicated to his people. Plus, it was currently closed because the front of the building was being repaired, which meant that no one would be inside.

Kaleth eyed the spires, trying to picture how well he would see Relioth from there, and smirked slightly. Yes, this should work, he thought as he started walking toward the cathedral with determination.

He hadn’t planned on trying to get in through the main entrance, but seeing as most, if not all, of the workers were gone at the moment, Kaleth thought it would be worth the risk. The good thing about this location was that most of the public wasn’t allowed anywhere near the main entrance because the fact that it was being repaired made it dangerous.

Kaleth waited for a woman to pass through before he climbed over one of the tall walls surrounding the cathedral, and quickly, and as stealthily as he could, ran through the garden that was situated between the cathedral and the walls. He kept occasionally looking around from behind a tree to make sure that no one had spotted him until he reached one of the pillars that were a part of the cathedral’s walls. He hid behind it and leaned on the golden wall to make himself as inconspicuous as possible.

Peering over the pillar, he checked if he could just go over to one of the entrances, or if he had to knock someone out first. He looked around for quite a long time, trying to spot anyone with both his sight and hearing. He couldn’t see anyone, and all he could hear were the muffled sounds of the busy city around him, which were much louder than they should be, now that he thought about it. Most likely because cars had to fly so close to the ground right now.

After another two minutes he decided that if there really was no one here, he shouldn’t wait for someone to come, so he left his hiding spot and quietly walked under the scaffolding that had been set up around the cathedral. He stopped in front of the first gate, as it was the closest one to him. It was much smaller than the one right next to it, but Kaleth hoped that meant it would be easier to open. Two statues flanked the wooden door, both looking like they’d seen better days, but despite this, Kaleth could see that one of them was Relioth if the scythe was anything to go by. The other statue, a woman with a mace, Kaleth couldn’t recognize, but he didn’t know that much about the religion. There were also other statues above these two, but Kaleth decided not to waste time studying them.

He put down the bag with his sniper rifle and tried the door handle, although didn’t expect that to work. And of course, it didn’t. He pulled out a lockpick and made short work of the lock since, while it had been renovated, it was still a lock from a thousand years ago, and he’d unlocked much more complex locks in the past.

He was about to open the door when he heard a voice behind him.

“You’re not supposed to be here. This area is out of bounds.”

Kaleth sighed internally. So close.

He whirled around, pulling out the knife he had found back in the Umbra hideout, and slammed the end of the handle into the man’s temple before he could react. Kaleth looked the now unconscious man over with annoyance. He had a gun but didn’t look like a policeman, so he was probably just someone who was supposed to watch the area in case someone tried to trespass.

For a second Kaleth considered whether he should drag the man inside or not, quickly deciding for the former. There could be someone else patrolling the area, and he didn’t need people looking for him before he even shot Relioth.

Kaleth opened the door and looked around one more time before pulling the man inside the cathedral by his arms, leaving him on the floor next to another statue that was between the small and large entrances. He took the man’s gun away, just in case, and grabbed his bag, which he had left in front of the door. He closed the door with a soft thud and then turned around to study his surroundings.

He had only been in a building like this once before, and at the time he had been too preoccupied with trying to stop an Umbra from blowing it up, so he hadn’t paid much attention to any details.

The cathedral wasn’t well-lit, but despite this, he could find the stairs quite easily. There were more statues, pillars, pews, frescos, paintings, and even flags. Kaleth didn’t spend too much time admiring any of them, but he couldn’t ignore the colorful floor that reflected the ceiling almost like a mirror. It looked even more incredible because what little light came through the stained-glass windows, it gave the swirl of colors on the floor amazing vibrancy.

This cathedral might have been built to worship false gods, but it was still an amazing piece of architecture.

Kaleth finally tore his eyes away from the floor and walked up the steps on the left that hopefully led to the spires. He could barely tell where he was going because there was very little light, and it only got worse the further up the stairs he went. Once the stairs ended, he found himself in a room as long as the cathedral itself, but very narrow by its standards. There was a stone floor, a shocking contrast to how the main part of the cathedral looked, and not much else except for two doors. One right next to Kaleth, and the other on the other side of the room.

Kaleth went to the one closest to him and opened it. He winced at how it creaked despite knowing that no one could have heard it. He was surprised the door wasn’t locked, but he wasn’t complaining.

There was another staircase, this time a spiral one. There was no doubt that he was in one of the spires right now, and this thought only made him climb the stairs faster. His surroundings only got darker and darker until he couldn’t see anything, so he pulled out his phone and used it as a flashlight.

Once there were no more stairs to climb, he looked up. There seemed to be a trapdoor above him. As soon as he touched the wooden surface, he pushed up until it gave way, and sunlight momentarily blinded him. He blinked rapidly as he climbed up and closed the trapdoor behind him.

Kaleth took a moment to collect his bearings as he stood next to the huge silver bell to find the Citadel. Since the part of the city where the cathedral had been built was on a hill, it offered a mostly unobstructed view of whatever he wanted to look at. At least until where the skyscrapers were.

Kaleth frowned at the skyline. He hadn’t thought about how odd this city was before. Most Enorian state capitals mixed the old and the new, building tall, new structures right next to the old ones while managing to blend the various architectural styles together without making it look strange. Not Enbrant, though. The whole city was made out of circles. The oldest buildings were in the center and the newest were on the very edge of the city. There were, of course, exceptions to this, but there were just a few of them.

Kaleth checked his watch. Only ten minutes to go. He quickly located the Citadel and walked over to the edge of the spire. There was a stone railing with gaps large enough to fit the sniper rifle easily, and so he quickly assembled the weapon and slid the barrel of the gun between the short, spiral pillars of the railing. He lay down, taking the rifle into his hands and adjusting the scope a bit.

Kaleth grimaced. Even after zooming in as much as the scope allowed him, the lectern was still a little too far away for his liking, but he’d just have to concentrate. He had managed to hit his mark from even farther away than this in the past. Granted, he’d had more than just one bullet back then, but he’d manage. The number of bullets didn’t matter that much, anyway. If he missed, he usually wouldn’t get another chance either way because people tended to run and hide when they noticed they were being shot at.

Kaleth looked away from the lectern to scan the crowd that had amassed under and around the small podium. There were far more people than Kaleth had expected, but as he thought it over, it made sense. Four thousand people had died, and naturally, many citizens of the Federation wanted revenge, so they came to hear Relioth announce a counterattack. If Kaleth didn’t know better, he’d most likely support that as well. Still, some of the protest banners against the Empire were in poor taste. Kaleth really doubted that nuking Iries would solve anyone’s problems.

It was a bit staggering how many people had the word Iries written on their banners. Kaleth had thought that particular racist slur had disappeared into obscurity, but apparently, he’d been wrong. It was sad but understandable, he supposed.

Having seen enough, Kaleth turned his attention back to the lectern and waited for Relioth to show up. The Eternal appeared about five minutes later with all of his usual arrogance and smugness. It was odd seeing him be somewhere earlier than he had to be. Relioth was always late. He must have been excited to start a war.

Kaleth would have shot him as soon as he showed up, but he kept talking to other politicians, and Kaleth didn’t want to risk killing one of them by mistake.

He put his finger on the trigger and adjusted the scope once more as he waited for Relioth to come forward and start his speech. Kaleth watched as Relioth finished talking with—wait, was that Teran? Kaleth watched him nod to something the president had said and walk back to the Citadel.

Kaleth’s heart felt a little lighter seeing that the man seemed to be all right. He looked stressed, but that was to be expected after having to deal with the fallout of the largest terrorist attack Enoria had ever seen. Being the defense minister at this time couldn’t be easy.

Finally, Relioth came to the lectern. He took a moment before he started talking, which was more than enough time for Kaleth to aim at his head. He held in his breath so he would stay as still as possible. Even so far away, Kaleth could still hear Relioth’s voice, but he couldn’t make out the words.

It was only as he pulled the trigger that he realized that he had just committed treason by killing one of his oldest friends, and despite this, Kaleth felt no regret at all. It was so very odd. With the silencer, the shot was muffled, but from the angle he had shot, it wouldn’t take the police long to figure out where the bullet had come from. He wanted to at least try to run before that happened, but then he looked at the scene again, and all he could do was stare, frozen in shock.

Relioth had an othrin bullet in his brain and he was still alive. He might have been leaning on the lectern and looked like he was in pain, but he wasn’t dead. Kaleth hadn’t even thought of this as a possible outcome of his plan because Mel had seemed so sure that othrin would kill any Eternal. Maybe the bullet hadn’t been made from othrin, after all, since it had been meant for his father.

The people in front of the Citadel looked like they didn’t know if they should cheer that the president was still alive, or panic because he should be dead and wasn’t, while Relioth himself had taken a step away from the lectern and was now glaring in Kaleth’s direction. Kaleth swore that his heart stopped for a few seconds, and before he could even get up, a hand gripped him by his hair and smashed his face into the stone railing, immediately breaking his nose and forcing Kaleth to cry out in pain.

Then the hand moved from his hair to his throat, and Kaleth found himself pinned to one of the spire’s four columns, facing a pissed-off Relioth. The bullet hole in his temple was gone—only the blood remained to remind him of what he had just attempted to do and failed.

“Do you have any idea what you just did?” Relioth growled at him, his eyes glowing with a bright white light. Kaleth wouldn’t lie to himself. In the ten years of knowing Relioth, he had never seen him anywhere near as angry as he was right now, and it was frankly terrifying. The fact that Relioth had broken his nose and was almost choking him didn’t help Kaleth calm down as he tried to pull the hand away from his throat. Unfortunately, Relioth was much, much stronger, and no amount of force Kaleth could muster would challenge Relioth’s.

“There were dozens of cameras pointed at me,” Relioth continued, sounding angrier and angrier with every word. “Not only did you ruin my speech I spent hours writing, but you also exposed that I’m more…durable than the average Enorian. How do you think,” he said, squeezing Kaleth’s throat a little more, making him gasp, “I’m going to explain that without saying the truth, huh? I tried my best to put a stop to you people from worshiping us once Enor wasn’t there to tell me what to do anymore. I tried to make you forget about us! And what do you do?”

Relioth’s grip tightened even more, finally making it impossible for Kaleth to breathe. He coughed and choked as he desperately tried to get air into his lungs, already feeling dizzy from his brain’s blood supply having been cut off. “You go and undo a whole century of my work!”

He finally let Kaleth breathe again but didn’t let him go. He didn’t wait for Kaleth to finish coughing and continued talking with a slightly less angry tone. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to figure out how to even create something like you?”

Kaleth knitted his eyebrows together at the wording. He wanted to ask what Relioth had meant, but his voice didn’t seem to be working at the moment.

“And then you just go and ruin everything! That’s what I get for trying to one-up Enor by succeeding where he failed. I should have just let his research die with him.”

“W-what?” Kaleth managed to get out. Unfortunately, he didn’t receive an answer because as soon as he asked, Relioth turned his head to look at something behind him.

“L-let him go!” someone said, and suddenly Relioth’s hand was gone. Kaleth fell face-first onto the stone floor and moaned as he hit his broken nose again. He spat out the blood that had gathered in his mouth and blinked sluggishly as he tried to look for whoever had spoken. He couldn’t see much besides the bell, but once he noticed the black, scaly tail, his blood ran cold.

Oh, no.

Kaleth tried to at least get up onto his knees, but an incredibly strong force pushed him to the ground again. All he could do was watch as his fears were confirmed, and Mel’s head appeared from behind the bell. The Eternal, in his dragon form once more, looked horrified, and his eyes kept flicking to Kaleth, even as he started advancing at Relioth, who in turn didn’t move an inch.

“I didn’t expect to see you again,” Relioth commented with a hint of disbelief, but then his voice turned furious again. “You told him about othrin, didn’t you?” Relioth asked and without further ado forced Mel to the ground as well with just a wave of his hand.

That didn’t stop Mel for long, though. He got to his feet again with a growl and pounced at Relioth with his claws prepared to tear the man to shreds. Unlike Kaleth, Relioth didn’t find this intimidating at all and avoided the attack by simply stepping sideways quickly, and then whirling around almost elegantly.

With their positions reversed Mel took a few steps back and stretched out his right wing over Kaleth protectively. Poor Mel didn’t seem to realize that Kaleth wasn’t the one Relioth was focusing on now and tried to defend him instead of doing the logical thing and flying away.

He shouldn’t even be here. Judging by Relioth’s amused expression, Mel wasn’t a challenge for him, and Mel running into Relioth had been exactly what Kaleth hadn’t wanted to happen in the first place.

Kaleth tried to tell the Eternal to run, but all he could manage was a weak cough. Mel looked back at him with worry and then proceeded to hiss at Relioth.

“You know, I always wanted to test out if it’s possible to beat one of us to death,” Relioth said casually and cracked his knuckles. “Personally, I don’t think it is, but I can’t be sure if I don’t try.”

He took a step forward, and Mel responded by breathing fire at him. If Kaleth could move, he’d cover his head to protect against the heat. He was close enough to Mel to feel it, but he was also too far away to get burned, so he just shut his eyes and waited for the Eternal to stop.

If the police hadn’t known where to look before, they would surely know now because there was no way someone hadn’t seen the flames.

“How original,” Relioth mocked Mel and punched his snout with so much force it sent the Eternal to the ground. He looked just as he had before Mel tried burning him. He didn’t even seem the tiniest bit singed. There was something odd about him, though. And then Kaleth noticed what it was.

There was an aura around his head, and it was the same white light his eyes had been. And it seemed to be spreading to his shoulders as well.

Relioth hit Mel once more for good measure and dragged him away from Kaleth, who once more tried struggling against Relioth’s hold on him. He watched helplessly as Relioth stepped on one of Mel’s wings, gripped the end of the bone, and pulled it up sharply. With a horrifying snap, he broke the wing right in front of Kaleth’s face. Mel screamed in pain, and Kaleth yelled at Relioth to stop with a hoarse voice.

Kaleth felt more than a little sick when he looked the broken wing over and saw the wing bone jutting out and leaking blood all over the floor.

Relioth only looked from Mel to Kaleth and back again, before snapping the other wing unceremoniously and dragging Mel to the edge of the spire by it. The cries the Eternal was making brought tears to Kaleth’s eyes. All he wanted was to stab his knife through Relioth’s heart, but he still couldn’t move.

“Run wherever the hell you came from, or I’ll do with you what I did with the rest of your friends. Again,” Relioth said and let Mel get up. The Eternal was shaking with pain, with his wing still bleeding, and his eyes glazed over. He turned them to Kaleth.

“Go,” he told the Eternal softly. Kaleth didn’t know why Relioth was letting him live, but he would be damned if Mel didn’t use the chance to save himself. He shouldn’t have even been here in the first place, and while Kaleth was touched that the Eternal was willing to risk his life for him, there was nothing Mel could do to stop Relioth.

Mel didn’t look like he wanted to leave, but then he lowered his head and jumped over the railing nonetheless, landing somewhere on the roof of the cathedral. Kaleth shut his eyes in relief. Hopefully, Mel would be able to hide somewhere and heal before someone could catch him.

He didn’t feel relieved for long, though, because soon enough Relioth reminded him that he was still there. Kaleth could see him eyeing the police cars that were heading their way, the sound of their sirens getting closer and closer.

“Well, it seems I have a mess to clean up. We’ll continue this later,” Relioth told Kaleth, and put a finger on his forehead, knocking him out instantly.