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...
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As soon as Kaleth regained his bearings, all he wanted to do was attack Relioth. Both verbally and physically if possible, no matter how little power he had right now. But when he scanned his surroundings, all of that left his head.
All around them was dark red sand, spiraling mountains of incredible sizes, a yellow sky with two suns.... What in the hell...?
"Don't freak out," said Relioth. "This is my off world retreat. Pretty, right?"
Kaleth focused back on the source of all of his life's problems, and glared at him. "Take me back. Right now."
"No can do, Kaleth," Relioth said, easily breaking the handcuffs. How was this possible? Those had definitely had othrin in them. Wasn't that enough? Had they been somehow broken beforehand?
Kaleth looked down at his suppression bracelet. Fine, if Relioth wasn't going to let him help his friends, he would do it himself. His heart made an uncomfortable lurch as he pulled on where the bracelet had clicked together just minutes prior, and it did nothing aside from hurting his wrist. Hissing, Kaleth tried again and again, ignoring Relioth telling him it wouldn't work.
He only stopped once his wrist started bleeding and his fingers stung. Godsdammit.
"Aw, Kaleth, look what you've done," Relioth chided as he walked towards him and reached out with his hand to his injured wrist. Kaleth didn't let him get near, though, and took a few steps away immediately, wavering a tiny bit as the sand moved under his feet.
"Stay away from me," Kaleth growled, which did seem to make Relioth stay where he was, but it also resulted in Relioth giving him a sad, pitying look. Seeing that just made Kaleth glare harder. "Take. Me. Back."
Relioth shook his head. He was grimacing, but his scowl was resolute. "No. This is the training exercise you agreed to do. I'll admit that bomb attack wasn't in the plan, but it makes this much better."
"How?!" Kaleth blew up at him. "How is it any better? This just means that if I don't figure this out soon, someone could die."
"Exactly," Relioth replied with a grin. Kaleth really wanted to knock some of those perfect teeth out. "That's what I call motivation."
Kaleth swallowed thickly, trying to keep himself from letting his slowly building desperation take over all rational thought. "I can barely teleport at full power from Enoria to Irithara, and you expect me to travel from a different planet with barely any energy left?"
Relioth nodded, connecting his hands behind his back as if this was a completely casual conversation. "The distance doesn't matter. You just need to really want to be there."
"That's not useful!" Kaleth snapped, clenching his fists.
"Of course it is," Relioth argued, now folding his arms. Good, at least he was getting annoyed now. Kaleth could handle that much more easily than him acting like he was older and wiser. Only one of those things was true. "I know you, Kaleth. You overthink everything. You never let your heart do anything besides pump blood around. That's not how our power works. You need to feel it."
