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

After the day they’d all had, Kaleth had been hoping they were done. That was not the case, though.

As they climbed off Mel’s back once he had landed next to the entrance to the tunnel, the first thing they all noticed were three new additions to the mansion’s defenses. It was a bit of a shock, seeing turrets with machine guns surrounding the house, but Kaleth got over that quickly. Directly shooting people wasn’t his father’s style, but he was certainly capable of it.

“Awesome,” Rayni gushed, and Kara begrudgingly agreed.

The presence of their upgraded defenses also must have meant that Nef had done something with the card he had given him. Maybe he had even done something about the alarm, but they would use the tunnel anyway. It was better not to risk it.

When Mel had switched forms so he would fit through the hatch, the armor had changed with him, its appearance now basically what Rayni was wearing. And his eyes were glowing.

“What’s wrong?” Rayni asked, noticing the eyes as well. Her previous enthusiasm was all but forgotten.

“The only person in this house is Alor,” he told them. “And I think he’s hurt.”

If Mel hadn’t added that last sentence, Kaleth would have probably tried to come up with an explanation that didn’t suggest that Nef and Nira were dead. However, hearing that Alor was injured made it hard to explain it differently.

They all rushed through the rest of the tunnel and climbed up into the garage, following Mel into the kitchen. Even before they entered it, they could see blood all over the floor.

Finally reaching him, Kaleth carefully examined his teammate. Alor seemed to be unconscious, leaning on the kitchen table with a towel wrapped tightly around his right thigh. The makeshift bandage was almost completely saturated with blood.

Mel didn’t waste any time, immediately kneeling next to Alor, putting his hand on his wound, and a second later the entire wound was enveloped by Mel’s blue light.

The whole process took about ten seconds, but it felt much, much longer. With every second, Alor looked a bit better, while Mel looked worse. Unable to just watch it anymore, Kaleth stepped in and crouched down next to the Eternal. He put a hand on his shoulder, steadying him.

When he was done, Mel sat down, breathing heavily. Kaleth kept his hand where it was just to be safe and turned his attention to Alor when he started coughing.

“You okay, man?” Rayni asked with concern from behind Mel. Alor nodded.

“Yeah, I’m fine now,” he replied, looking gratefully at Mel, who smiled wearily but happily back. It was odd how easy it was to tell he was smiling despite the cloth covering his mouth, just from looking at his eyes.

“I think I speak for everyone when I ask,” Kara said, “what the hell happened while we were gone?”

“Relioth happened,” Alor replied, gesturing to the makeshift bandage on his leg. He untied it and a bullet fell out. There was a collective cry of confusion and alarm, to which Alor nodded.

“Relioth was here?” Kaleth hadn’t expected him to show up in person. The man—Eternal—had always claimed he was too busy to do anything other than to run the country, and, even though it was hard for Kaleth to admit, for the most part, it was kind of true. Even if he and Relioth had often joked about how little Relioth spent time doing his job, he barely ever left the Citadel and spent most of his nights working. Kaleth didn’t think Relioth had ever taken any time off, not even when he had been just a senator.

Alor got up slowly, and Mel struggled to do the same, but seeing that he wasn’t making much progress, Kaleth helped him. He still looked a bit unsteady, but at least he didn’t seem like he would keel over any minute anymore. “Relioth just showed up and made my brother and Nira go through some portal he created. I still can’t believe that happened.”

Well, that at least meant that both Nira and Nef were probably still alive, which was much better than what Kaleth had been thinking had happened to them. He had trouble imagining portals, but he wouldn’t ask Mel right now, especially with how upset he looked just from the mention of Relioth.

“Why was there a bullet in your leg?” Rayni asked. That was a very good question. Kaleth would also like to know why Relioth had let Alor live. Or at least given him the choice he had explained to Kaleth in the diner.

“Well, I, um,” Alor said hesitantly, pausing for a moment. “Okay, I saw him and shot him in the head.”

Everyone was rendered speechless except for Rayni, who whooped.

“And he survived that?” Kara asked with disbelief.

“Didn’t even blink.”

It wasn’t that Kaleth really believed a bullet would stop an Eternal, but it was disappointing, nonetheless.

“That doesn’t answer my question, though. Did he shoot you back?” Rayni continued.

“Kinda,” replied Alor. “He, uh, pulled the bullet out of his forehead and threw it at me.”

Kaleth ran a hand through his hair and let out a long breath. That sounded like the bullet hadn’t even caused Relioth pain. What a shame. He would have enjoyed emptying his gun into Relioth just because it would be unpleasant for him.

“Is there a way to kill one of you?” asked Alor, looking at Mel, who seemed unnerved by the question.

“W-well, you need a weapon—or bullet, I guess—made from othrin.” Seeing the others’ inquisitive looks, Mel continued. “It’s a really rare metal. It drains our power when we touch it.”

He paused for a few seconds and swallowed heavily. “B-But, if othrin comes in contact with our true selves, it can kill us. Especially here,” he said, touching his forehead. “That’s where the biggest part of ourselves is because it’s easier to control a body from here.”

So, did the Eternals have to control brains to control bodies? That sounded complicated. What was it even like to be a host to an Eternal? If they controlled the brain, did they also control the consciousness of their host as well?

“So a headshot with an othrin bullet should do the job,” Alor said, apparently already formulating a plan. Mel nodded, keeping his gaze trained on the floor. Kaleth understood why. Mel might trust them not to use this new piece of information against him, but telling them about what was most likely the only weakness Eternals had was still a big deal.

“I’ve never heard of such a metal,” Kara commented. She didn’t sound skeptical, or distrustful, just surprised. They’d spent so long fighting the Umbra, and they’d been told that regular bullets would work, but the point of their jobs wasn’t to kill the Umbra, so they’d never had the opportunity to figure this out.

“Relioth doesn’t want you to know about it,” Mel explained. That made sense. A god wouldn’t want his worshipper to know how to kill him and have the means to do it.

This brought up an interesting question, though. Their religion was dead. Didn’t Relioth mind that? Then again, despite not being worshipped as a godlike being, he was still one of the most powerful people in Enoria and had a lot of fans, which Kaleth supposed was close enough.

“He controls the only two mines that are in Enoria,” Mel continued. “The biggest amount of othrin is in Irithara, which is why he hasn’t conquered it yet. There’s so little othrin here that we can’t afford to make arrows, or, well, bullets, so we use weapons like daggers and swords instead, but the Eternals in Irithara don’t have to limit themselves like that.”

“Wait, so those weapons back at your hideout were made out of this…othrin?” Rayni asked, but the hope in her eyes faded when Mel shook his head.

“They are just there as a last resort. If you damage an Eternal’s host enough to make them leave the body, they can’t possess another person immediately because it takes a lot of power to attune to a new one.”

“So, if we found some othrin, and made a bullet out of it, it could kill Relioth,” Alor said, rubbing his chin in thought. “So we just need to find some and figure out where Relioth took Nef and Nira.”

Mel looked like he wanted to say something, but Kara spoke first. “Look, Al, not that I don’t want to help you find them, but we have to be realistic here. Even if we had some of this rare metal, there’s still a big chance that Relioth can just stop a bullet mid-air.” She looked at Mel for confirmation, and he tentatively nodded.

“I…I did that, once.”

“See?” Kara continued, gesturing to Mel. “And to find them, if that’s even possible, we need to be awake enough to use our brains, and personally, I feel like I’m going to fall asleep any minute now.”

As Rayni nodded and yawned, Kaleth wondered why she was tired. She was an Eternal, after all, but Rayni had always loved to sleep, so perhaps she just wanted to do so if everyone else agreed.

“So, I think I need to lie down for a bit.” Kara continued, looking at Alor with a sympathetic expression. “We’ll look for them tomorrow, okay? We need to rest first.”

Alor nodded. “Okay, you do that. In the meantime, I’ll—”

“You too,” Kara said firmly, narrowing her eyes at him. “Mel might have healed you, but you look exhausted. And I’m guessing he didn’t replace the blood you lost.” They both looked at Mel.

“Not, um, not all of it,” Mel admitted, looking guilty. Alor was about to continue arguing with Kara, but Mel spoke first. “You said Relioth used a portal to leave, right?”

“Yeah. He opened it right here. I think he used it to get here, too.”

“I might be able to find out where he went,” Mel continued. “I think I can, erm, feel which way the portal went. There’s a faint energy signature here. I should still be able to follow it and see where the portal led, but it might take me a while.”

“Great,” said Kara, looking back at Alor. “While Mel does that, you need to drink something and go to sleep. Not alcohol.”

Alor didn’t seem like he wanted to, but he looked too exhausted to continue fighting with Kara about it. Kaleth was fairly sure that if Mel hadn’t told him he could find Nef and Nira, Alor wouldn’t give in and continued arguing until he passed out.

“Fine,” Alor said with a sigh and walked over to the tap, drinking right from it and then stalking out of the room. Kara followed him a moment later after giving Kaleth a pointed look. He wasn’t sure what she had meant by it, but he assumed she was trying to tell him to get some sleep as well.

Kaleth didn’t think he could fall asleep tonight, though, which he knew would make Kara mad, but there wasn’t much he could do to change it. He had always had trouble sleeping, and with how much there was on his mind, he knew even trying to fall asleep was pointless.

“How likely is it that the Overlord will come back and kill us all?” asked Rayni with another yawn.

“I don’t think he will, but we don’t have anywhere else to stay, anyway,” Kaleth answered, and Rayni shrugged at him.

“’Kay. G’night.” Kaleth shook his head as she left.

“Um, so, I’ll see you in the morning,” Mel told Kaleth, sounding like he wasn’t sure if that was the right phrase, and pulling down his mask and hood. His hair was now even messier than before. Kaleth forced himself not to appreciate that.

“You’re going to try to find out where Relioth had gone?”

“Yes, of course,” he replied in such a soldier-like way that Kaleth kind of expected him to add a salute. The Eternal seemed to have thought that Kaleth had disguised an order as a question, which was not at all why he had asked this. “I should know where they are in an hour or two.”

“Right,” Kaleth nodded. “Do you mind if I stay here? I need to sort out my thoughts, and I prefer it when I’m not alone in the room.”

Mel looked taken aback by the question. “You…you want to stay here?”

“Yes,” Kaleth replied with an uncertain tone, as he checked the kitchen table’s drawers for some pens and paper. “Unless you don’t want me to.”

“No, no, I’d love to have you here,” Mel blurted out, and when Kaleth grinned at him, he grinned back. “It’s just…. I thought you’d want to sleep.”

“I’m not tired,” Kaleth assured him, finally finding some paper and pencils. He could try to make sense of his thoughts by writing them down. It rarely gave him peace of mind, but it was a good way to figure out what to do next.

“So what you told Alor about these portals wasn’t just to convince him to listen to Kara?” Kaleth joked, putting the papers on the table and sitting down. Mel actually laughed at that. It wasn’t anything loud, but it still managed to surprise Kaleth.

“I wasn’t lying. I’m a terrible liar,” Mel said. Kaleth almost assured him that he was an okay liar, but he really wasn’t from what Kaleth had seen so far. At least Mel didn’t seem to be sad about it, so Kaleth didn’t feel compelled to lie to make the Eternal feel better. “But I might not be able to find out where the portal led. It’s been a few hours since it was created.”

“The energy signature is fading?” Mel only nodded in reply and tentatively sat down as well, closing his eyes and breathing in deeply. Assuming that Mel had started his task, Kaleth looked down at the blank papers, picked up a pencil, and started writing.

Unfortunately, most of what he was coming up with was useless because he just kept thinking over and over about how easily Relioth had found out where he and his team tried to hide, and how pointless it all seemed.

If Relioth could figure out where they were hiding, and if he wanted to capture or kill them, then he could have just waited here until they returned and be done with it. So why hadn’t he done this yet? The only possible answer to this was that he didn’t want that. This had to be simply a show of power—a way to tell Kaleth that trying to stop the Eternal was pointless.

“You can’t give up,” said Mel, making Kaleth flinch as he was brought back to reality. Mel was looking up at him sadly, his eyes only half-open. Just how tiring was this process?

“You’re reading my mind again,” Kaleth said, unable to contain his annoyance, and then he sighed, regretful of his reaction. He would have to get used to this if he spent time with Mel, but he was a very private person. It made him uncomfortable.

“Sorry,” Mel apologized, looking down. Kaleth could almost see his now nonexistent scaly ears drooping. “I don’t mean to, but it’s like you’re yelling at me.”

He hadn’t realized his thoughts were that loud. Or that some thoughts could be louder than others. “It’s okay. I don’t think you do it on purpose. I’m just a bit on edge,” Kaleth explained himself.

“I get why you feel like this. Relioth just killed thousands of your people. But you’re not the kind of person to just let things like that go unpunished,” Mel said, smiling slightly, probably to make Kaleth feel better. He couldn’t say it was working. It mostly just left him wondering how Mel could possibly think he knew him well after spending a day with him.

“How would you know?” Kaleth asked him with a frown.

Mel seemed a bit uncomfortable but didn’t look away this time. “You know how when you meet someone new, the first thing you see is what they look like?” Kaleth wasn’t sure where Mel was going with this but gestured to him to continue. “Well, when we meet someone new, we can see what the person is like on the inside. That’s also how we can recognize each other even if we change hosts.”

Kaleth supposed that was a logical way of using telepathy. It would certainly make it easy to find out whether a person had ill intentions or not. But hearing that his entire personality had been analyzed made him feel almost violated. How much did Mel know about him just by looking into his head once?

He supposed he couldn’t blame Mel for doing it, though. When they met, Mel assumed that Kaleth had planned to kill him.

“That’s why we try to hide ourselves with this,” Mel continued, lifting a corner of his hood to reveal the Umbra cloaking device. This explained nothing about how the device worked, though. “It stops other Eternals from recognizing me.”

“How?” After all the years working for Luxarx, they’d never gotten their hands on a working cloaking device, and so they’d never figured out how the devices worked. The Umbra had always managed to destroy them before being captured.

Mel looked uncertain for a moment. “Magic?”

“Magic isn’t real, Mel,” Kaleth said automatically, and now he was angry with himself for even asking. Mel didn’t seem to understand any of his own people’s technology, at least not fully. Though Kaleth wondered how this was possible.

Sure, he might not know how a phone or a computer worked, but he had some general idea. The fact that Mel seemed to believe magic existed either meant that nothing had ever been explained to him, he had possibly been lied to, or that magic actually existed, which was too much for Kaleth to accept.

“W-well, regardless, that’s how I know you won’t let Relioth win. At least not without a fight.” Mel was grinning at him now. How could a being so much older than he was be so positive and hopeful, while Kaleth had become pessimistic and cynical even before reaching adulthood? Kaleth would probably never understand this.

“Even if it means playing right into his hands?” Mel thought for a moment before his expression brightened again as Kaleth continued talking. “He knows me. He expects me to fight him.”

“Would you really be playing into his hands, though?” Mel asked. “I mean, you think he expects you to fight him, right? But he doesn’t know how you’re gonna do that. Maybe you could use that somehow?”

Kaleth blinked at Mel dumbly, staggered by what he had just said. He had been so preoccupied thinking about how hopeless their situation was that he hadn’t thought of this.

Relioth had called him predictable, so maybe he would have to do something completely out of character to surprise him. Assuming that Relioth wasn’t watching them right now, but Kaleth ignored that stray thought.

“That is very good,” Kaleth told Mel, who blushed at the compliment. Now he just needed to think of a plan he would never agree to himself, which meant that would have to think like an even more impulsive version of Rayni.

“I-if you don’t mind. I’ll continue trying to find out where Relioth’s portal led,” Mel told him, looking at Kaleth expectantly. Kaleth nodded and stared up at the ceiling as he started putting together an insane, suicidal plan.

After another hour, Mel sighed heavily and put his head in his hands. Kaleth had been so invested in writing down ideas that he jumped a bit at it. Kaleth immediately put his pencil down and looked at the Eternal with concern. “Are you all right?”

“Y-yeah,” he replied quickly, putting his hands down to look at Kaleth. Mel looked exhausted and maybe just a little fearful. “I just…. I’ve tried to follow the energy eight times now, and I always either lose concentration, or I get confused and start following the second portal.”

“Second portal?”

“The one Relioth used to get here,” Mel explained and shrugged. “It leads somewhere else, but the two paths divide later on, and once I notice it’s always too late, and I can’t find my way back.”

Kaleth grimaced at how discouraged Mel seemed, but how could he possibly help him? He barely understood how any of the Eternals’ powers worked. He looked down at the paper in front of him where he had written—and also mostly crossed out—his ideas, hoping to get a new one. And thankfully, he did.

“Would it help if you drew the path as you follow it?” Kaleth asked, looking at Mel once more, hoping that what he had just said made sense. It was hard trying to advise someone about something he had no experience with. Not that he hadn’t done that before. “Perhaps mark where it divides in two, so you know where you should look out for that.”

Mel smiled, though he still looked tired. Mel’s powers were very impressive, but they seemed to also be incredibly taxing. Kaleth would have to pay closer attention to what Mel’s limits were and to respect them because the Eternal himself didn’t seem to do so. “I could try.”

Kaleth quickly drew up an approximate outline of the Federation on a new paper, making a dot where in Imbera they were to make it easier for Mel to know where to start. Once he was finished, he looked at what he had made, wrinkling his nose in distaste at how ugly it looked, and handed it to Mel along with the pencil.

“But won’t you need it?” the Eternal asked, and Kaleth shook his head with a smile. Mel hesitated for a moment. And then his eyes started glowing again.

Mel started drawing a slightly wavy line, crossing the sea and heading southwest, but the speed at which he was drawing was astounding. If this was how fast he was following the energy trail, it wasn’t surprising that he kept getting lost.

Mel made a dot, and a moment later let out an annoyed sigh and started over. On his second try, he managed to follow a path but got lost somewhere along the way. Finally, after one more try, the pencil stopped about ten centimeters under the place where Enbrant would be.

“It’s an apartment, a really big one,” Mel said, staring down at the paper, but he didn’t seem to be really looking at it.

“Do you know which city it’s in?”

Mel’s eyes dimmed, and he trained them at Kaleth, looking a little too apologetic. “I think it was Ghera, but I only saw it in a flash before I got to the apartment, so I can’t be sure. Sorry.”

“No matter,” Kaleth told him. “We have an approximate location of the city, anyway—it shouldn’t be that difficult to figure out where Nira and Nef are now, even if they aren’t in Ghera. You’ve done very well.”

Mel’s cheeks went red once again, but this time he grinned. Kaleth took the paper from Mel and took out his phone, happy to find out it still worked. He opened the map app and zoomed in on where the city should be. The location seemed to be accurate, more or less, but there were many cities in the area.

But, assuming that Mel was right, Kaleth still had to find out where the apartment was located. And he’d need to find a computer, or at least a tablet, to do that. The phone was just too small and inconvenient for this. He just hoped he would be able to find the one Rayni had left here.

Before putting the phone back into his pocket, Kaleth looked at the news, mostly just to make sure that no new catastrophes had happened in the meantime. For the most part, there was nothing new written there. He was about to close the web browser when one particular headline caught his eye.

President Morthan’s speech about the future of EF

A small, grim smirk tugged on Kaleth’s lips as a sudden plan entered his mind.

“I’ll need a bit of othrin to make a bullet,” Kaleth told Mel. “Do you have any idea where we could get some?”

Mel avoided Kaleth’s gaze. It seemed talking about the metal was a touchy subject for the Eternal, but he was the only one Kaleth could ask. Mel opened and closed his mouth a couple of times like he wanted to tell Kaleth something but always thought better of it.

“What is it?”

Mel sighed, giving in as his shoulders sank. “Relioth…has already made bullets like that. Not many, but still….” After a moment, Mel breathed in deeply and continued. “Would you give me another paper, please?”

Kaleth frowned, not really seeing why, but gave Mel one anyway without a word. The Eternal quickly began sketching with the pencil expertly, like he had spent years practicing it, and soon it became apparent that he was drawing a bullet. Kaleth waited patiently for him to finish.

That is until Mel added a horribly familiar symbol to the bullet.

Seeing that equal-armed cross made of spearheads made his blood run cold. When Mel handed Kaleth the drawing with a look of compassion, all he could do was stare at it, speechless. It was truly a gorgeous drawing, especially considering that Mel had barely spent five minutes on it, but Kaleth couldn’t appreciate it at all. He just studied it over and over, relieving the worst and best part of his life, while fighting the urge to start laughing hysterically.

“I’m sorry,” Mel said, and Kaleth’s eyes snapped to the Eternal.

“You knew…” he muttered with disbelief. “Those people I was told to kill, they were just Eternals who refused to follow Relioth, weren’t they?” Kaleth shook his head, feeling utterly disgusted with himself. “How can you even stand to be around me?”

Mel looked like he wanted to hug him, but then settled on squeezing Kaleth’s hand, for which Kaleth was grateful, but it still made him uncomfortable. Maybe he would be handling the physical contact better if Mel didn’t keep looking at him so intensely—it made him want to look away.

“You’re a good person,” Mel said, and Kaleth let out a sardonic laugh. “You might not think so, but I can see it.”

“A good person doesn’t kill innocents, Mel,” Kaleth replied with a sigh. He wanted to continue, but seeing Mel scowl at him shocked him into silence. Mel didn’t scowl.

“We’re soldiers,” the Eternal reminded him, clearly upset that Kaleth wasn’t listening to him. “Relioth doesn’t mind if we stay neutral, but we still chose a side, knowing that we could be killed because of it.” His expression changed from annoyed to sad. “And you thought you were doing the right thing.”

“That’s not really true, though,” Kaleth argued and sighed again. Maybe Mel was right about the Eternals being soldiers, but that didn’t justify Kaleth’s actions. Mel just didn’t know the whole story. “I didn’t…. I was told that by taking out the targets I was given, I would help protect Enoria, but I didn’t bother asking who the people were, or what they did to deserve to be assassinated, even though I had a suspicion it was all a lie. But I just did it because I would get paid for it.”

“Isn’t that just following orders? Because I used to do that all the time.”

“Yes, but….” Kaleth cut himself off, suddenly feeling very tired. “Why are you trying to justify it?”

“Because you’re blaming yourself for something that’s not your fault,” Mel replied, his gaze somehow growing even more intense. Kaleth was almost certain the Eternal hadn’t blinked once in the last two minutes. “I don’t know why you did it exactly, but I know that you wouldn’t do something like this without a good reason.”

It sounded a bit funny hearing someone he’d known for barely a month talk to him like they’d known each other for years, but he supposed telepathy sped up the process for Mel, at least.

“I didn’t have a good reason. I was just desperate,” Kaleth told him, and Mel looked at him curiously. Kaleth grimaced a bit. “You want me to tell you about it, don’t you?”

“Maybe it would help you,” Mel said, finally letting go of Kaleth’s hand. “You’ve never told anyone about it, right?”

“Can’t you just look into my head?” Kaleth asked, not overly enthusiastic about the idea.

“I don’t like doing that without permission, and even if you told me I could, it wouldn’t help you,” the Eternal said, smiling encouragingly. There was still sadness in his eyes, though.

Kaleth wanted to tell him, but he didn’t know if Mel was influencing his emotions, or if he was finally ready to talk about it after twenty years.

Wow, he was pathetic, wasn’t he?

Kaleth shut his eyes for a moment and breathed in deeply. He wasn’t so sure it would help, but he hated seeing Mel sad or disappointed. “When I was seventeen, my father disowned me.” Mel was watching him with curiosity but was staying silent, only nodding. Kaleth decided to answer his question, anyway.

“Mostly because I was an idiot. He said that he’d give me the money to go to university only if I agreed to study business. I wanted to study something else, and I borrowed the money I needed from him without him knowing, and…well, it all went downhill from there.” Kaleth waved uncaringly. He had made peace with this by blaming his father completely a long time ago. “Things between us had never been that good, to begin with, and technically stealing from him didn’t help.”

“Well, anyway,” Kaleth continued, “at the time, the economy was not in very good shape, and no one wanted to hire a high school graduate with no actual skills.”

“I remember that,” Mel said. “I couldn’t get a job either at the time. And they kept telling me I need something called an ID. I still don’t know where to get that.”

“You need to have a birth certificate to get an ID, so I don’t think they’d give you one, anyway.”

“Oh.” Mel seemed saddened for a second before asking Kaleth to continue.

“My mother lived on the other side of the Federation, and since I had no money, I couldn’t get to her. Somehow, I survived a few weeks in, um, less than desirable conditions,” Kaleth said, deciding to skip just what that had entailed for Mel’s benefit. “And then I was approached by two government agents who told me their organization would pay me a lot for little work.”

Kaleth shook his head at how foolish he had been. “At the time, I didn’t really care that it seemed a little too good to be true, so I signed all the papers they gave me without really reading any of them. They told me they’d contact me later, but gave me money immediately, so I went back to the university. When I finally found out they wanted me to learn how to shoot with a sniper rifle, and then use it on people, I, of course, wanted to quit, but I was told that they’d make me regret it, and without the income, I’d be right back where I had been.” Kaleth paused, feeling disgusted with himself, even after all these years. “I should have refused to work for them anyway, but I was too much of a coward.”

Mel once again looked like he was going to disagree, but Kaleth didn’t leave him enough room to say anything. “It was Relioth again, wasn’t it? Why is he so obsessed with manipulating my life?”

“I’m not sure,” said Mel. “But Relioth is exactly the one you should be blaming for making you do what you did.”

“I killed eleven of your people,” Kaleth reminded the Eternal angrily. “Why aren’t you furious with me? In fact, why are you even helping me?”

“You didn’t know. It might have been you who pulled the trigger, but it was Relioth who killed them. He manipulated you and threatened you when you were young and vulnerable, and he used you in his war without you even knowing you were a part of it,” Mel told him, looking at him with sympathy. “So, if you need someone to blame, blame him.”

Mel stayed silent for a moment, before quickly adding: “But you shouldn’t let this drive you either. You should fight against him because it’s the right thing to do, not because you want revenge.”

Kaleth was once again shocked into silence. With how innocent and naive the Eternal seemed, it was so easy to forget how old he was, so much so that Kaleth hadn’t even thought of the possibility that he might also be wise. “You’re…you’re right.”

Mel beamed at him and continued doing so, even though Kaleth didn’t return it. His mind was still reeling too much. For the last fifteen years, he’d been trying to make up for the assassinations by working for Luxarx, which in hindsight wasn’t the best course of action, but it didn’t matter how many people he saved from the Umbra’s terrorism because there was no fixing what he’d done. Doing this had not helped, though, because the longer he’d kept going like this, the worse he’d felt.

Instead, he should have accepted his wrongdoings as something he would never be able to change a long time ago and just focused on trying to make the world a better place. Or the Federation, at least. And in this case, that meant stopping the megalomaniac in charge of the country. Although, it would be quite hard to not think of it as revenge after what Relioth had done.

“You don’t have to tell me, but,” Mel said, looking uncertain whether he should ask what he wanted to or not, “how come you don’t work for them anymore? Since they threatened you.”

“Oh,” Kaleth said in surprise. He hadn’t thought about this for a long time. “Uh, they told me to kill my own father. Obviously, I couldn’t do it. But, oh, how I tried.”

He still wondered why Relioth had told him to kill his father. Knowing him, it had probably been just to entertain himself.

“But didn’t you get punished for it?”

“You know, I’m not sure,” Kaleth answered truthfully, but he didn’t try too hard to think about the time right after he had quit. “I’ve had quite a lot of alcohol-induced blackouts in the following months, so they might have done something, and I just don’t remember.”

Talking about almost killing his father made him remember something, though. “I still have the bullet I was given to kill him, though. And it looks exactly like this.” He pointed at Mel’s drawing. “Maybe it’s made of othrin as well.”

Mel seemed skeptical, his brows drawn together into a frown. “Are you sure? I mean, your father isn’t an Eternal, so you wouldn’t need othrin to kill him.”

Mel did have a point, but Kaleth was pretty sure the bullet was made out of othrin. Every time he’d touched one of them, he’d felt the urge to let go of it, and it had never gone away until the bullet left his hand. He’d thought it was just his emotions, his horror at what he was expected to do with the bullets, but thinking about it now, that didn’t really make a lot of sense. After all, if he’d felt like this because he’d been about to kill someone, why had the feeling stopped once the bullet wasn’t in his hand anymore?

“Trust me,” Kaleth said. Mel opened his mouth to protest but didn’t say anything before nodding.

“Okay. Where did you leave it?”

“In my apartment. Theoretically, all I have to do is go there, retrieve it, and then put it in Relioth’s brain.” Kaleth smirked at Mel. “And I think I know just where and when to do that.”