After defeating Irif, everyone assumes that the hardest part is over, and that they can finally relax for a moment. But while flying back to Enoria, Kaleth and the others are attacked by an ancient enemy, who they thought was long dead. And he has a...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Kaleth was...different now. Mel couldn't yet definitely tell if the change was for the better or worse, but so far he was leaning towards the former. To best put it, Kaleth was now much more openly affectionate towards him, which usually just made Mel's head spin. He hugged him, held his hand, even kissed him in public. In Irithara.
It was as if he was suddenly free of however many issues he'd had with this, and he didn't care about them anymore. Mel would be over the moon because of this under normal circumstances, however, it was very obvious what had brought on this change.
After absorbing Irif's power, Kaleth had been less bothered by...well, everything. And once again, Mel would be ecstatic about that, but.... It also meant that Kaleth was a bit less considerate of other people's feelings. Particularly the people he didn't like.
And that worried Mel. Kaleth had always at most been a little dismissive or sarcastic. Now he was outright hostile, particularly towards Mereria. They hadn't interacted too much, thankfully, but the one conversation Mel had witnessed had scared him.
Kaleth had outright made a threat towards her, and it had been Edras who had had to tell Kaleth to back off. He hadn't been happy about that either.
But on the other hand, to Mel, Kaleth was even nicer than before. So this was all very conflicting. But perhaps it was good that he cared less what other people thought of him. And Mel had had a talk with Kaleth about his behavior towards Mereria, and he had seemed regretful of it, claiming that he had just been too angry to be rational.
So the most worrying thing of all was still the fact that Kaleth was now the most powerful being on the planet. Mel still didn't know what to do with that. The first few days, he'd been terrified of Kaleth basically becoming Irif. Thankfully, that hadn't happened, and it didn't seem to be a danger given how Kaleth was usually acting. But it didn't mean Mel stopped worrying.
He wanted to believe he would be able to tell, but it was still entirely possible Irif was still there, either pretending to be Kaleth, or influencing his thoughts and feelings. But of course, Mel wouldn't say a word of this. Not yet, anyway. He didn't want Kaleth to be mad at him.
He really needed to discuss this with Rayni when they landed. She was flying somewhere behind them, far enough that Mel couldn't see her when he turned his head around. Probably for the best because she was carrying Mereria, and if she and Kaleth were near each other, the atmosphere would be undoubtedly much worse.
Although it was quite pleasant right now. Kaleth had a hand on the side of Mel's long neck and ran his fingers over the scales from time to time. And the loving emotions Kaleth was sending him in waves were even better. This made focusing on the bad things that much harder.
Nevertheless, Mel felt hopeful. There wasn't any threat looming above them, and even if there was, there was no one who could stand against Kaleth.
