A warm breeze carried the stench of rot to them. As far as they could see, only destruction and death filled the landscape. Here, the world was silent, hushed somehow. Broken homes flanked the road. Most appeared as if they’d been torn apart by something grotesque. The remains of cars and dried-out corpses littered the road. Something terrible had washed through this place. David could feel it—like a tangy fragrance lingering in the air, left in the wake of something devilish. The charge of essence was hard to miss, too. Yet, it wasn’t these things that had his heart racing.

  And from the silence he got from the others, they had the same thoughts too.

  “Where is this?” Elisha asked. His shadow cloak swirled around him like an alien shroud of horror. His face was covered in darkness, and from within, a pair of oval silvery-white lights glowed where his eyes should be. He’d changed since they ascended. Something within him had retreated into the comfort of his own shadow as he strived to get stronger. David felt a slice of pity and guilt—he’d been the cause of it. He could see the marks of his words on their faces. Their eyes had gained a new sharpness and had lost their softness to the cold, hard world of Amareth’s tower.

  His tower.

  David tested the connection he felt to the tower and shuddered at the power that hung not so far away. He’d thought being the tower ruler made him some kind of god, but that had been a mistake. Here, he felt almost as ordinary as he had before he conquered the tower. He still felt the swirl of essence, and when he summoned his sword, he sensed the dragon lurking within him. Yet, he felt nothing of the Ruler’s power. It was there, connected to him, but he couldn’t use it—not as much as he had been able to while in the tower.

  “I think we are back on Earth,” Zoey said, her eyes roving, scanning for anything that spelled danger. She was a wild thing now. Her hair was cut short to expose more of her angled face. Her time confined within the orb had sharpened her gaze—fierce and predatory, like a beast ready to strike at prey only she could perceive. Every little thing incited her, pulling at the rage she tried to lock away and unraveling her so quickly it stunned David.

  “Not any place I recognize, though,” Elisha said as they moved forward. Here, the roads were bad, torn by a recent stroke of violence and age-old neglect. It was nothing like the many places they had seen in the tower. The cars testified to that.

  The familiarity was no comfort to any of them. They had accepted the tower as the new reality, and somehow, they’d expected their return—if possible—to be on the eve of change. This was different. From the chaos before them, things were still the same.

  “A monster wave?” Elisha asked, the hood of his shadow cloak vanishing in black shreds to bare his face. Like Zoey, his hair was cut low, and his beard buzzed near his skin. His eyes were darker, his lashes longer. He had grown a seductive set of full lips in his transformation, and he was almost as tall as David. He appeared stronger than before, and David could feel the oppressive wave of essence radiating from him.

  David wished the distance between them didn’t exist—a chasm, different from the one before. They deferred to him like he was their king and not their brother. It gutted him, and yet, he couldn’t change it. It was as it should be. They had to grow stronger to protect themselves when he couldn’t. And he knew there would be times when he couldn’t.

  “David,” Elisha called, just as someone stepped out of the half-gutted home and moved boldly into the center of the road. David stopped in front of what remained of a woman. Only the strands of dark hair stretching from her half-eaten head gave her gender away. The rest of her was crushed, eaten, and mangled. A small walking distance away, a boy hung halfway out of a car that had tumbled on its side. Strangely, he remained untouched.

  The siblings stopped. Chloe stood a hand’s stretch away from Zoey, lute in hand. Her face was set in a perpetual frown. She had changed the most—less whiny and more proactive. She cried at night. Some nights. Quietly, to herself, away from the others—an attempt to hide weakness. David yearned to help her, but Zoey had suggested she be allowed to deal with the changes herself. The Tower of Amareth had broken something in all of them and shown them how fickle their lives and their worlds were. They were little more than kindling, easily extinguished if not fueled and fed.

  The man in front stood on the other side of the car, cradling a rifle. At a glance, it appeared to be military-grade. He stood thick, his eyes set with casual deadliness. His face was half wrapped in a filthy, desert-colored turban. His cargo pants had seen better days, but that didn’t take away from the threat in his gait or the lack of fear in his eyes.

  “More,” Zoey whispered, but David had sensed them already. He almost mocked himself for his carelessness.

  It felt like playing on a new field, with a new set of rules. In the tower, he had been able to sense threats; here, the people didn’t have enough connection to essence to make them spark like distant lamps. They were ordinary and gave off a different kind of aura—not subtle, but not obvious to everyone either. And this, David realized, was not his territory.

  “Vith, where are we?” David asked the other inhabitant of his body. He’d merged with the meditator, but it felt like he’d loaned her his body as a vessel. Every day, he absorbed a bit more of her, but his control over her portion of the cosmic power was lacking, and his insight was even poorer. The more he tried to devour her, the farther he shifted from balance.

  “No idea,” Vith said, her speech and mannerisms slowly becoming like his. She hated it. David could sense that as clearly as the blazing orange that burned hellishly above them. “You should ask the giant.”

  The man had not said a word, and neither had the others still hiding in the shadows. Some kind of military tactics? David wasn’t sure. He’d trained with Specter, but the objective behind that training had been simple—get strong enough to protect yourself and kill the damn spawns spilling out of the tower.

  This was uncharted territory in every way. He had to be careful.

  So he tossed his sword down and raised his hands. The others didn’t follow. The expression on the man’s face didn’t change, but David hadn’t expected it to. The man’s demeanor suggested he had been trained as a soldier.

  “Hello,” David said. “We didn’t know we were trespassing. We are lost. Can you please tell us where this is?”

  The man didn’t move. He didn’t say anything either. Not even a muscle. David slowly lowered his hands and took a step forward. The soldier unfroze. It was a fast and stunning maneuver. In one fluid movement, the giant had his gun trained on David, his body lowered in preparation for an exchange.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  It was David’s turn to freeze.

  A chorus of marching boots sang as more bodies flowed out of their hideouts. They were surrounded. Guns and machete-wielding men and women slinked into the noon light, all dressed in matching gear to the first man—in colors only. Some wore denim, and others wore khaki, but they all seemed organized and fully equipped to invade and destroy a small town.

  For a moment, as they spilled out and arranged into formation, David wondered how guns would have probably been useless in the tower. The thought tickled something in him, and he chuckled. Ignis grunted, as if to remind David that he was still there. David ignored him. Instead, he focused on the small woman marching over to him.

  She was almost Zoey’s height but wispy. David imagined she could float. Her black t-shirt was tucked into cargo denim pants. A small dagger in a makeshift sheath slanted against her hip, and a gun hung from her right shoulder, its muzzle brushing the back of her neck as she walked. Her face was severe, tanned from prolonged exposure to the sun. In another life, she might have been beautiful, but now, as she approached, she appeared taut and strained, like a drawn bow.

  “I am sorry for the misunderstanding,” David said, his eyes moving between the woman and the giant with the gun still pointed at him. He couldn’t imagine that harming him, but it would be tedious to leave twenty or more bodies in their wake. Peace was better than violence in this situation.

  Someone shouted something at the woman from the left, and she grinned, showing yellowing teeth. The closer she got, the clearer it became that they were somewhere far from home—perhaps another country.

  “Where are you from?” the woman asked, her accent confirming what David had feared. Her eyes scanned him, waiting. They held no patience. “Where are you from? You lie, and my friends put so many exit holes in you and add you to the many broken bodies already gracing the asphalt.”

  “I say we…”

  “Shut up, Elisha,” David said before his brother could say anything that would push the small army to squeeze their triggers. Yet, that small delay gave him time to come up with a scrap of a lie to help their case.

  “We heard there are monsters here,” David said. “We came to help.”

  The woman frowned, doubt creeping up her face and into her eyes. “You are not one of Anhangá’s killers?” she asked, her eyes twitching as she squinted up to peer at David. He frowned, confused by the name. He shook his head, hoping she could see his sincerity.

  Her gaze shifted from him to the others behind him, narrowing sharply when it landed on Elisha. His shadow had become a long, dark coat. David wasn’t sure when he had learned to do that, but he was grateful for his brother’s initiative.

  Chloe’s lute hung from her shoulder, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. The woman stared for a moment before turning back to David.

  “How long have you been in Altamira?” she asked.

  David’s frown deepened. He didn’t know where that was.

  “A couple of months,” he said, his face hardening. If she asked more questions, he wouldn’t have a choice. He wondered if he should tell her where he was from. He cursed the tower for dropping them here. He’d thought they’d go straight to the next tower, but this was even more complicated.

  “You didn’t think you’d be sent directly into Balek’s tower, did you?” Vith asked, sarcasm lacing her voice. That was one of the new things she’d learned since their merge. It was delivered with a tame bite, but she got better at it every day.

  David probed her for more answers while he listened to the woman in front of him speak.

  “You will need to prove you have what it takes to enter the tower, Ruler. Every tower is the god’s pride. You have conquered Amareth’s tower, and Balek needs to prove that his tower is not as weak as Amareth’s.”

  That made sense.

  David turned to see that the soldiers had closed in on them. It had happened subtly, carefully—like a snake coiling about its prey. David was impressed. Specter didn’t have this much organization.

  And they are gone. Probably all dead, my parents too.

  “Are you listening?” the woman asked.

  David blinked his thoughts away to focus on her. She came up to his chest, her fierce eyes planted on his, searching.

  “You will have to come see the chief,” she said. “He will know what to do with you.”

  “Or you could just put us to work right now,” David said. “I know we might not seem like it, but we can be useful. My brother over there is particularly strong, and the rest of us can be used for support. You just tell us what to do, and we will get on to doing it.”

  “That is what makes you suspicious… friend.”

  She smiled, and this time, David saw that they were on the edge. She didn’t believe a word he said, and he didn’t want to see what this chief would do to those they didn’t trust.

  “You talk like an American, which begs even more questions. But the real problem is why you are here, in Altamira. Did Vítor send you? Are you trying to raid us as the monster wave hits us? No, I don’t think that is possible. I don’t think even the Anhangá is brave enough to attack us while the monsters rage. Why?”

  “To help,” David said. “I don’t know this Vítor person, but we are here to…”

  The world groaned. The sound echoed like a mythical giant rousing from a deep sleep. It vibrated through David, scattering his thoughts like flies in his head. Something was happening, and from the horror he saw on the woman’s face, he knew it wasn’t the first time.

  The ground trembled, and the woman staggered into David. He held her firmly in place, his gaze fixed on the bleeding sky above. The sun was gone, swallowed by the forming clouds. It was strange—the power he felt was grand, more than what he’d expected in a place like this.

  “What is going on?” David asked, his eyes still locked on the clouds. They started maroon and soon became the color of a fresh, weeping wound. It was beautiful and terrifying.

  David glanced down at the woman cradled in his arms. He felt her shake with fear, but her eyes were deadly calm. Her training was taking over. She pulled away from him and screamed something to the others. They dispersed, flowing past the siblings like a stream of death.

  She turned to meet David’s eyes. “Come, you say you are here to help, no?” she asked.

  David nodded.

  “Good, your chance has come. The worst wave is upon us, and we can use all the help we can get. Perhaps I will believe you after this.”

  David nodded. Nothing else could be done. And if this was a wave, it was going to be a huge one. He wasn’t sure their guns and machetes would do much good.

  “We are going, right?” Elisha asked.

  Zoey eyed David with strange reverence in her eyes. David wished he could see her old stubbornness. This new side of her made him feel surreal, as if he’d become something alien.

  “Yes, we are,” David said. “We should help, and perhaps they will help us.”

  The last part was said to the armed woman. She wanted to ask a question, but someone screamed for her to come, and she fled, calling behind her for David and the others to follow her.

  “I think we are somewhere in South America,” Zoey said as they jogged after the woman.

  Elisha nodded.

  “That makes sense,” David said, trying to remember the location of all the other towers. “So we are in Brazil.”

  “What is left of it,” Chloe added.

  David nodded as they ran down the street to catch up with the soldiers. He wondered why his heart raced violently within his chest—fear or excitement? It didn’t matter. He called back his sword, preparing his mind for what was ahead.