The light vanished from the earth, and everything was smeared red with blood and horror. The trucks peeled through the city, driving in a mad haste. Men and women sat in thick silence in the back, their eyes fixed on the sky and their hands squeezing rifles. Headlights pushed through the scarlet-hued dim, and David watched the procession with growing interest.
Although this wasn’t his home, his heart raged with budding worry. This part of the city had been abandoned, but it seemed the wave of monsters would appear in a populated area. He’d seen that before. He could recall with startling clarity the gore that had stretched across the expanse of his city. The familiar landmarks were coated in blood and gore. The slack, dead faces of people he’d once known—and his parents—left behind to fight and die by themselves.
It was a fresh agony—a jagged blade opening an old wound he thought he’d healed. Sometimes, all it took to drown in the black waters of memory was a reminder. A sound, a word, or the sky going red. He moved restlessly, wanting to launch himself off the truck. Beside him, Elisha hissed, irritated by the pace of the trucks.
“Where are we going?” David asked the leader of the small army.
She sat with her back to the truck head, her body rigid against the heave of the truck’s movement. She seemed lost in the sea of her thoughts, and his voice pulled her out of it. She blinked up at him, her eyes asking him to repeat his question. David did.
“You will hear it soon,” she said, a small smile spreading over her face, poorly masking the dread.
Her fear had an odd, unplaceable quality. David wondered if, perhaps, this was her first wave. But the scars on her hands and the battle wounds on many of the others in the truck disproved that. This was something else.
“What is it?” David asked.
She frowned up at him. “I know this is not new to you.”
He pointed to the sky. Most of the others stared at him as though he were foolish. From the edge of his sight, he saw Chloe staring at one of the soldiers. His left eye had been replaced with a clear blue glass bead. He grinned at her.
“Yet, I can see that you are troubled by this,” David continued. “So what are we running into?”
The woman frowned. In the dim illumination, he could see the conflict displayed on her face. Her attempt to hide anything made her seem untrustworthy. Yet, David imagined he would have done the same in her shoes.
Humans, always hoarding secrets, Ignis said.
David almost laughed at the hypocrisy. The dragon was the father of his kind. No one was a greater hoarder than Ignis. Yet, David agreed with him.
“This is a tier-five wave,” she said. “I'm sure the chief has deployed other wings to the site, but just take that in.”
She pointed east, where the sky was thickest. In the distance, bits of red fell from the sky like large blobs of blood. David’s sight was better than most on the truck. He stood slowly, staring in awe at what he saw falling from the sky.
He had fought against monsters before, even before he sauntered into the tower. But this was something else. From where he stood, he could hear the snarls. He perceived the stench of rancid pollution. Those were not normal beasts. They were something else.
Amareth had seemed cruel, his monsters driven by a lust for destruction and death. This was different. This was corrosive. Their presence alone devoured the landscape, eroding every trace of life.
David’s eyes widened as the sky over there broke, shattering like an urn and spitting out something even worse.
“Elisha,” David called.
The truck buckled, throwing the others about as the driver sped through the bad road. David and Elisha stood still, untouched by the chaos around them.
David pointed. “Can you get there?”
“Are you sure?” Elisha asked, eyeing the soldiers in the truck.
David nodded. Hiding was no longer an option. Something was afoot, and ordinary people didn’t need to die. These soldiers could do little, if anything, to make a difference.
Elisha nodded, and his coat flared, covering him in a shroud of night. Just before he vanished, he split into three, each shadow leaping over the edge of the truck and disappearing into the distant darkness. It was like watching a nightmare come to life.
Some of these men will find it hard to sleep for weeks. But David knew that wasn’t new. In their line of work, they were more familiar with demons than the sweet relief of dreamless sleep.
“What was that?” the woman asked. “What did he do? Where did he go?”
David ignored her. He would have time to explain later, but for now, he was about to make the hardest of all decisions.
He turned to Zoey, hoping she couldn’t see how difficult it was to ask. He steeled himself.
“Zoey, can you join him?” David asked.
Since her incarceration in the Orb of Harvest, she hadn’t been the same. She was growing strong again, but the orb had eaten into her soul, leaving her less of what she’d been. Now, she winced at his voice, flinching from the pity. David took the guilt, his eyes hard on her. This was important. He wouldn’t send her to her death. Not again.
He watched her stand up, pulling Chloe up with her. She turned toward the direction he’d sent Elisha and gave a nod.
“David,” she said before leaping into the air. A spread of purple wings, like her Vjognir’s, spilled out behind her.
Again, the soldiers gasped as if they’d just witnessed a miracle.
“I am not as fragile as you think.”
And then she was gone, cradling Chloe as her wings beat and carried her far away from them.
David watched them go. The farther she flew, the more he wished to be there with them. But he couldn’t fly, and although he could run faster than the truck, he didn’t want to leave these people. He noticed the confusion on the woman’s face. The truck had slowed down, and the one in front had stopped a small distance ahead.
“What are you?” the woman asked, her fingers tight around her rifle. Fear was raw in her eyes, reflecting how little she knew of the battle she fought.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“My name is David,” he informed her. “I am human, like you, but I came from the first tower. The one in my country. I am sure you heard that the monster waves stopped there?”
The woman frowned, shaking her head. David cursed.
He turned toward the direction of the disaster. What he feared was still falling from the sky. Though still far from it, he could see its head as though it were falling directly in front of him. That was the face of something mythical—like the grand and monstrous snout of Ignis. It bore down with palpable intensity, cruising leisurely toward those below. It was the herald of death, and David trembled with a mix of anticipation and worry.
“You will understand when we get there,” David said, just as the message he’d been waiting for appeared in front of him, splashing his face with color.
[Xanthu has been added to the monster wave!]
[Balek watches you!]
A host of thoughts floated through David as he stared at the two lines of message. Guilt pulsed within him, wheeling him around to face his enemy.
Of course, he should have known this was Balek’s doing. He should have expected that the petty tower god would do this.
This was his fault.
For being here. Their presence alone had triggered something colossally beyond the understanding of these people.
“Is that still a tier-five wave?” David asked, but the woman was too stunned to speak. She clung to the rail welded to the top of the truck as it started to pick up speed again.
David let her watch the horror in the distance. The faster she familiarized herself with it, the quicker she’d come to terms with it.
Yes, monsters are real. I have one within me, David thought, and Ignis rumbled like loose thunder.
That is quite offensive, the dragon said. And Xanthu should be easy for you to take care of.
“If you had mastered the things I try to teach you, you would have been able to fly by now.” David could hear the irritation in Vith’s voice—loud and smarting. He wondered where the delightful mediator had gone, knowing she could hear and feel his thoughts.
She didn’t respond to that.
“Can you stop that?” the woman asked. She shook her head as if she’d just realized something. “Sorry, I haven’t introduced myself. I am Gis Ademir, leader of the sixteenth patrol squad. Will you help us?”
She was scared. It broke her voice and softened her face. The mask of bravery and control was gone in the face of real danger. She held him, begging with her eyes.
David nodded. He was going to kill the monster anyway, but it felt good to be asked.
“You will have to do something for us when we get there,” David said as the trucks banked sharply to the right.
He heard people wailing and running. Someone ran into the truck in front, and the vehicle rolled over them before they could scream. David winced.
“Yes,” Gis said, not minding the death. “Anything.”
“Good. I need you to stay back. Don’t worry, we will kill them all. Tell the other leaders to call their teams. My brother will need the space cleared.”
Gis nodded frantically.
The wind flowed colder here, near the edge of the city. The truck took a slow bend to the right, having learned from the last death. The sea of people split to let them crawl past.
But David could see past the crowd, down the steps that led to the sand of the riverbank. There, he heard the crack of gunshots and the eerie screech of monsters.
He saw them now—bipedal and furry, standing on crooked legs with eyes of eternal darkness. Some fed, tearing through screaming people, blood matting their fur as they dug roughly into their victims' bowels.
David leaped off the truck. Revulsion pulsed through him.
Behind him, Gis screamed orders as she ran after him.
David could sense hints of Elisha. This was an ideal place for him to do battle. The near-darkness gave him all the shadows he needed to tear through the monsters.
David stopped abruptly, stepping out of the path of a snarling demon. It towered over him, a couple of feet taller, with hollow eyes and bone-white fangs bared in mad rage. David's gaze shifted past it to the water, where Xanthu hovered, floating just above the surface.
The corruption of these beasts licked at David’s skin. Vith protected him with a thin outer layer of essence, like a second skin resting above his natural one. He felt it as he tore through the monster, severing its limbs quickly, and then abandoned it to bleed out to its death.
All around the street, David heard gunshots mixing with Chloe’s solemn lute. She was shrouded and wrapped in two layers of golden essence walls. From within her cocoon, she sent a wave of torture at the monsters near her.
Those closer to her howled as unimaginable pain struck them, twisting their insides until they snapped, falling one after the other.
Green streaks shot through the air, splitting as they hit the monsters, moving like sentient weapons. Zoey’s arrows glowed in the artificial dusk, piercing through one monster and then another like a silent whisper of death.
They were good—strong enough to hold their own against this caliber of enemies.
That left the big, bad bug untended.
David carved his way through the monsters blocking him from reaching Xanthu. He wished Gis would clear out the civilians and soldiers so Elisha could sweep the fodder in one decisive strike.
He slipped left, away from the swing of a large paw and flesh-tearing claws aiming to open his chest. His sword arm moved instinctively, piercing the creature before it could strike again.
It growled weakly to David’s back, dying without even the briefest glance from him.
David marched for Xanthu. He knew why the beast had come and who had sent it. It was cruel to play with these people’s lives for games of pettiness.
David stopped where the water met the sand. He knew the beast would come closer—Balek couldn’t help himself. He was a selfish and self-obsessed god.
So, David wasn’t surprised when Xanthu floated forward, hovering in front of him.
David stared at it, noting the details put into creating a nightmare like this. A halo circled its oval, smooth head, slanting down the cheeks so it covered the stretch of its face. The halo glowed a faint blue, like light caught in glass.
It had no eyes, only a mouth set in a thin line. The rest of it was reptilian. Dark obsidian scales rippled down its folded arm as it regarded David.
The tips of its legs touched the water slightly, its scales mirroring the red of the sky and giving the appearance of being wrapped in a strange, fiery cloak.
“You need to go back, Xanthu,” David said. It was pointless talking to it, but David still doubted what Ignis had said. The monster appeared and felt truly formidable.
And Balek was not stupid. He wouldn’t send something weak to test him unless the god seriously underestimated him. David didn’t want to think that was possible.
Instead, he watched the creature’s face while listening to the gunshots fade into silence—Gis’ doing.
Xanthu surprised David. It opened its mouth to reveal an empty darkness. It let out a strangled croak, as if it wanted to push out a word but its voice was ruptured.
“Why should I leave? This is my domain.”
Balek’s words settled in David’s mind. They felt like lead and marble.
Although he knew it was not real, the throb in his head felt as though it had always been there. David grunted but stood firm, refusing to give the tower god the satisfaction of showing he could be broken.
“Is this alright, Balek? There must be laws about gods interfering like this, and you know there is a lot I can do now.”
The tower god cackled, his laugh like groaning stone in David’s mind. “You puff in pride because you rule with borrowed power?”
“Borrowed, but potent,” David responded.
“Try, then. Let us see how far your potent power will take you while I slaughter the fools who put their faith in you.”
David grinned. “It must burn you that I am beyond your reach.”
“No,” Balek said, his voice taking on a less jovial timbre. “But you will be within my reach soon. You know you must, or your journey remains half-met. That is, if you can survive Xanthu.”
David felt the god’s essence disperse and knew he was facing the monster now. Even if he had any doubt, Xanthu’s manic roar confirmed it.
David braced for the monster’s attack.
