Enoria is preparing for war with Irithara, and the team sans Kaleth are doing the best they can to put a stop to it before it progresses even further.
Their plan? Find Mereria, get her help with killing Relioth, and save Kaleth in the process. They...
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It had been hours since Mereria had gotten into a fight with Kaleth, and Rayni couldn't even make herself feel bad about the fact that she hadn't shown up yet or contacted anyone. Rayni was just so angry with her after what Nef had told her. Sure, it was all assumptions, but Rayni had no problems believing that all of it was true.
And she didn't want help from Mereria anymore anyway, especially now that there were sixty-eight Umbra willing to help her kill Relioth. It was a little fewer than Rayni had been expecting, but it would have to be enough.
For such a large number of Eternals, they had somehow managed to hide from sight until they reached the Umbra base, which turned out to be much larger than Rayni had thought. There actually were a few floors under the one they had used before, so everyone had plenty of space to rest.
It was a good thing Eternals only needed a few hours to recharge, unless they had been drained for years like she had been, because a little after they had arrived, Nef found out that Relioth had announced that he had big news to share with the whole of Enoria.
This was the perfect opportunity to take him out since Relioth was going to announce whatever he wanted in front of the Citadel. With so many people there, it should be easy to surround Relioth and attack, even if it would be during the day. They would just have to get some normal clothes instead of the Umbra armor.
Once that was decided, Nef started arguing with the two Umbra lieutenants that had just been freed about how they should actually attack, and so Rayni left using the most inconspicuous reason she knew—she had said that she needed to go to the bathroom.
Not that it mattered anyway. Rayni highly doubted they had even noticed her absence yet, and it had been half an hour. And she also didn't care if they had noticed because she had better things to do than to argue about nothing right now. She needed to find Mel.
He had disappeared sometime after they'd gotten back to the base, and Rayni hadn't seen him since. And since he wasn't in the base itself, there was nothing else to do but walk around the forest that surrounded it and hope she would find him.
He hadn't said much during the trip back, which was alarming in itself, but then disappearing entirely? Yeah, even if Mel wanted to be alone, there was no way Rayni was just going to leave him be without at least making sure he was okay.
It was pretty clear what was bothering him, which made Rayni really wonder what the hell had happened while he'd been with Kaleth. And it also made her wonder if she really wanted to know.
Suddenly, what Nef had told her even before Ikara came back to her. She'd completely forgotten about the fact that apparently she and Mel had the same surname. Should Rayni tell Mel once she found him? But she didn't even know why they had the same name.
She stopped thinking about this as soon as she felt the familiar consciousness she'd been looking for. And she could easily follow it now, which was a relief because she didn't particularly want to spend hours finding him.
