Xanthu was a mass of devilish intensity. It moved with unrelenting grace, speed, and madness. From its back, it pulled a long, flexible steel whip. The weapon was as black as the void, menacing in the way it crackled when the monster swung it.

  It stared sightlessly at David, its mouth slightly open and soundless after the roar.

  David watched it in awe. It was an element of horror, pulled out of the rotten bowels of a nightmare. He grinned because, some months ago, this would have buckled his knees and made him piss himself.

  Somewhere in the nooks of his mind, David felt sorry for the man he had been and grateful for the trials of Amareth’s tower.

  “Come,” David said, waiting with his hands held out as if for an embrace.

  He wasn’t sure how easy it would be to fight something like this, but that didn’t matter. With every passing minute, he judged himself. A wave of pride from Ignis made him smile. He let his perception flow back and noticed his siblings were hard at work. Chloe’s serenade lulled the monsters just enough for Elisha and Zoey to turn them into corpses.

  “Vith, pull down my essence shield,” David said, curious to test his limits. He wanted to test the extent of his new station. Becoming The Ruler had given him a vague arsenal of abilities, and he wanted to try some of them out.

  Xanthu’s whip speared through the distance, cutting through air and space to reach him. David stepped forward and crouched under the curving lash. The whip hissed over his head, a serpent’s whisper.

  “You can die, you know?” Vith said.

  David grinned. He’d never considered the possibility of immortality, and now he felt like he should have. Yet, he knew he hadn’t attained that. He was no god.

  “I know. Just do it.”

  The whip curled back to Xanthu, and the monster stretched out one clawed finger. Its whip writhed in its left hand like a large worm raging for freedom.

  On the finger pointing at David, a small white orb slowly began to form. David didn’t need Vith to explain what he was seeing.

  The orb expanded to the size of a baseball, rippling with concentrated and pure essence. Then Xanthu flicked it as if it were throwing dirt.

  David contemplated taming it and discarded the thought. If he wanted to test himself, he would have to leap into the fray and get dirty. He watched the ball sail lazily toward him, like a creeping wisp of light.

  “There is something weird abo…” Vith started, but it was too late.

  David had already felt the brewing mass of essence in the ball and had expected something to happen. The orb expanded, growing large enough to overwhelm David with light and power.

  “Use the gauntlet!” Vith yelled, but David refused. Instead, he used one of Ignis’ sword skills.

  Unlike before, their resonance was perfect, and the sword was almost completely uncovered. The skill had a different feel—a completeness that David hadn’t felt before he ascended.

  And David felt Ignis’ approval.

  Sword Skill: Shredded Autumn

  The sword moved in a loose spiral, coated in a shimmering glove of essence. It was smooth, easy—like dancing. David recalled the move and synced into it as though he’d made it himself. He felt warm, spinning to complete the sword form.

  In the memory, it was Ignis’ human form, performing a lazy but deadly choreography. The dragon sliced into a mountain, creating a small opening that expanded further until a hollow was torn into the rock.

  David poured more essence into the sword, sharpening it and reinforcing the dragon’s power as he carved into Xanthu’s attack. Light bathed him, flooding his sight as he extended the sword skill, instinct taking over.

  The large orb flaked and faded away into the night, torn into tiny shreds of white light. For a moment, the red hue was stained white, and then it returned to the color of blood.

  David smiled up at the hovering monster.

  It had no eyes, but David could sense the shock radiating from it. He saw the moment it realized it had no power here, no authority. This was Balek’s territory, but David had just enough power to fight back. He felt proud.

  “Is that all?” David asked. “Your master must have given you more gifts to test me with. Lay them on me.”

  “Awfully proud there, David,” Vith said. “You don’t have to provoke a god. Not yet, anyway.”

  Get that girl out of your head, David. This is how a dragon should act. We don’t cower, we rule. We stomp. We conquer.

  “And die, stupid dragon,” Vith said, and David chuckled at Ignis’ temper.

  He kept his eyes on the monster in front of him while enjoying the banter of the entities within him. But Vith was right—a part of him knew that. Provoking Balek was unwise.

  He was about to venture into the god’s tower soon. Where Balek’s people were outlaws in Amareth’s tower, this second tower would be their domain.

  “You are toying with it?” Elisha asked, stepping out of David’s shadow to stare up at Xanthu.

  The monster regarded him briefly, then turned away to face David.

  Elisha hissed, swinging an arm up to send six gleaming greatswords, forged from darkness. Xanthu flicked its left wrist, and its whip flared to life, swaying violently to tear the swords apart as if they were made of dried twigs.

  Elisha hissed again, his irritation clear.

  “He is mine,” David said. He hadn’t meant it to sound threatening, but Elisha took a step back from him.

  David set his eyes on Xanthu, too ashamed to meet his brother’s gaze. Fear. They feared him. Perhaps they loved him too, but he couldn’t stand the fact that they feared him. Chloe worst of all.

  He’d been her favorite sibling once, and now she wouldn’t even hold his hands.

  David pushed the worries from his mind and focused on the monster. Vith was right—he shouldn’t play with an enemy like this.

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  And they had other things to do.

  “Vith,” David said, and his old mediator knew what he wanted.

  The quality of essence within him changed. He could borrow a bit of his mantle. The soul key had turned him into something else—a tiny crack of divinity. And now he could use that to some extent.

  It flowed out of him, cracking his bones and weighing heavily on his spirit. The pain was sharp and potent, blotting every thought from his mind.

  Vith helped him settle on one: vanquishing this abomination from the world.

  Xanthu seemed to sense its end coming. It swung its whip at David, and Elisha raised a hand. Seeking David's permission, he conjured a dome of opaque blackness around them. The whip crashed against it and glanced off.

  David pushed the blood-chilling essence into his sword. It was a tiring affair, and he knew it was overkill—but he needed it done to send a message.

  The wall vanished once Elisha noticed David was done with his preparation.

  And when it was gone, David saw the second orb Xanthu was forming. No, two orbs.

  These were dark, filled with a corruption so rancid that David held his breath for a moment.

  “Too late,” he muttered, and then he swung his sword.

  [Arcane Magic: World Scythe]

  David’s sword slashed through both monster and magic, cutting Xanthu in two at the chest. It took a moment for it to happen. The orbs shattered and dispersed like fading fragments of glass.

  The monster still pointed as the top half fell back into the water, and the rest of it followed.

  David stared at the space Xanthu had occupied before, watching the horizon turn bright as the monster’s hold on the sky was undone.

  I told you a monster of that level should be easy for you, Ignis said.

  David nodded. His sword returned to its normal state, and he made it vanish. He waited for the familiar burn he’d experienced since ascending.

  It started slowly, like a pinch. Then it worsened until he cradled his arm, holding himself back from ripping his shirt off to bare the mark on his arm, where the tower ring had been.

  Now, a helm-crown had formed over the rings, gaining spikes as he ascended.

  Once the pain subsided, he pulled up the sleeve of his shirt to see what he’d gotten. The second spike was halfway complete, etched in bold black.

  He wondered what would happen when the helm was complete. Vith didn’t know, and neither did any of the voices. He imagined they would have told him if they did. Ignis didn’t know either.

  He was carrying a mark that no one understood, suffering as it came to its complete form.

  “We have to go soon,” Elisha said. “We can’t stay here. Many of the soldiers are dead, and if we stay longer, many more will die.”

  David nodded. “We have to find that dungeon and leave. And I think Gis can help us after all we’ve done.”

  “Most of it was our fault,” Elisha said.

  David frowned, and his younger brother shrugged. “It is not difficult to figure out. I know monster waves are normal, but that thing you just killed wasn’t normal.”

  “Yes,” David muttered. “Balek is playing a dirty game. We might have some trouble when we get inside. It might be wise to stay out here for a while. Or maybe forever? I don’t know how, but we could go back and search for Mom and Dad.”

  “And drag them into our promise?” Elisha asked, his face still hidden in shadow within the hood, but David heard the hardness in his voice. “You decided it would be better for us to ascend, David. And I agree. We couldn’t have stayed in that tower. We have to keep moving. Dangers are not new to us—not even to Chloe.”

  A monster screeched in the distance, and silence returned along with the golden light of noon. The clouds cleared slowly, the red replaced by the natural blue and white of a normal afternoon sky.

  A copy of Elisha walked over to where they stood. While Elisha had details and depth, this copy was a block of shadow resisting the growing light. It shimmered like tar and was then pulled into Elisha's shadow.

  “That is always cool to watch,” David said, grinning. “How many can you form now?”

  “Four,” Elisha said. “Two, if I want them to last longer than five minutes. They take a lot of stamina and essence to maintain. But with two, I can give them near-complete autonomy. They pull essence from me passively to heal themselves or mirror my other skills.”

  David nodded. He waved to Zoey, who was leading Chloe over to them. Both appeared exhausted, utterly drained—Chloe more than the rest of them.

  Zoey struggled to meet David's gaze, and it made guilt churn within him.

  Behind Zoey, David saw Gis running down the steps from the street and then through the sand. Her wide eyes darted around, taking in the scattered corpses of monsters along the riverbank.

  Even as she sprinted toward them, Gis remained poised, ready for a surprise attack. With her gun clasped in both hands and her neck turning from side to side, she was a good soldier.

  In the old world—the one before the towers appeared—she would have won medals by now.

  “We have explaining to do,” Zoey said under her breath as Gis got closer. “I don’t think they’ve seen anyone from the towers before. What do we tell her, David? We don’t have time to explain too much.”

  “We tell her the truth,” David said, drawing glances from his younger siblings. “They need to know what is going on and make their choices. Although people go into the towers, no one really informs them on what to expect. And Balek’s Tower is one of the worst ones. They have to know, or it would be like sending them into a meat grinder.”

  “True,” Zoey conceded. “Still, I maintain that we don’t have time. A lot of people died in that monster drop just now. And I think we all have an idea why that happened. If we stay any longer, more people will die.”

  David nodded. He’d come to that realization too, but he’d also just realized that what had happened might not have been a monster wave at all. He bit down the wave of frustration and smiled at Gis.

  “What…” she began, trying to catch her breath, her eyes fixed on Chloe’s lute, then on Zoey, whose wings had disappeared.

  Elisha was still cloaked in shadow, and it rippled defensively, as if daring Gis to test it with her gun.

  David wondered if she would. That would be both hilarious and nerve-wracking. Elisha’s response to a threat was always to attack with deadly finality.

  He was the dark knight of the group—quick to leap, to fight, to kill and destroy.

  “What was that? What are you? Where are you from?” Gis rushed the questions.

  Behind her, the other soldiers cowered, staring at the group from a distance while checking for monsters. David liked their fear.

  “Was that your usual experience with monster waves?” David asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Monsters falling from the sky? Monsters like that? With the badass ones hovering out back? Is that usual for you?” Zoey asked.

  Gis shook her head. “We were not due for a wave until tomorrow, and from our calculations, a tier-four shouldn’t appear here. But irregularities are not new. Once we found a sma—”

  “I need your help with something, Gis,” David said, his face pinched as if he were in pain. “I don’t have to lie to you anymore, so I won’t.”

  “We are here to enter the tower on your continent. It should be in this city since we were sent here. Can you take us to it?”

  “I can’t,” Gis said, quickly adding, “Only the chief can do that. There is a squad or two stationed near the tower entrance. You can’t get close without the right clearance.”

  “How do people get access to the tower then?” Elisha asked. “They all have to go through this chief?”

  Gis frowned, her face tightening like she’d eaten something sour. David realized what was difficult for her to say before she said it.

  “Those who want to enter the tower have to pay for clearance,” Gis said.

  Elisha cursed, and Gis avoided his gaze, glancing away from Zoey’s disapproving frown. Suddenly, everything fell into place for David.

  “That’s why there’s a territorial war?” David asked. “This Victor person wants to profit from the tower too?”

  “That and other things,” Gis said. “If you want to enter the tower, you will have to meet the chief.”

  “Or we could slaughter the whole lot of you,” Elisha suggested, and Gis flinched.

  “No, we won’t,” David said, his voice taut with annoyance. “What’s the fee?”

  “A thousand,” Gis said.

  David chuckled. “In a world falling to the clutches of monsters and disease, he’s charging that high. Fine. Take us to him.”

  Elisha glanced at David, his eyes questioning. But David’s smile was gone as soon as Gis turned around to lead them.

  All he could think about was how best to crack the chief’s head open.