Dawn crept quietly, but David felt it coming. He heard Selass’s angry footfalls before the woman’s large frame showed up outside the open door. She sneered at him, ready to explode into insults and scream. David contemplated using his aura to shut her up. She was probably a ranker or a Lord, but her aura attacks were less about power A good control on aura could cripple a Lord for moments, even longer.

  David let her talk. The others were already rousing from their brief rest anyway. And from where he sat, he could see the sky. The darkness would fade soon.

  “You left!” Selass crowed. David watched her march into the room. Chloe sat up, scratching sleep away from her eyes. “You just left us there to clean up! You could have helped. If you had, many would have survived.”

  Behind her, Alice slipped into view—silent and deceitfully fragile. Her eyes found David watching her. She gave an expression of confusion. As though she couldn’t understand why Selass was raging toward David.

  “Why have all that power and be a coward?” Selass asked, still approaching.

  David scanned the woman, searching for any sign that this would be dangerous. There was none. Yet, he kept his guard up. Watching. Listening. He would have been hurt by her words if he cared anything for her judgement on him. She thought he was supposed to protect everyone. How optimistic. Sickeningly so.

  “What are you talking about?” Zoey asked, standing up. Elisha stepped out of a mass of shadow on the wall behind Selass. He folded his hands over his chest.

  “Your brother. Strong conqueror of towers. Powerful lord. He fled away from the mercenaries the temple hired. We could have saved some of our allies. If he had stayed, there would have been more of us alive.

  She pointed at David, scorn dripping from her voice. “But he fled. Many died. What kind of man are you?”

  David looked out the window again. Time crawled. He couldn’t wait to get out of Hormfirth. No, the whole dungeon. Balek’s finger was on everything. He tainted everything, even the human heart.

  “You don’t have anything to say?” Selass asked. David remained silent. The air stirred, thick with the smell of whatever abomination Balek had unleashed on the city. Questions on questions on questions.

  “Stop, Selass,” Alice finally spoke. She sounded drained, but David had seen the glow in her eyes. Something was coming.

  He looked past Selass, to Elisha. His brother stood like a thick pillar of black, swirling nightmare. A beautiful monstrosity. David had begun to realize how much their advancement uncovered certain parts of them. And the darker their souls became, the harder it was to mask it.

  “You should step back,” Elisha said to the woman. Selass didn’t move. She didn’t pay him any attention. Dellon joined Alice. He looked confused.

  “Am I the only one feeling something weird happening here?” Carlos asked, still sitting on the floor, his back against the wall near Chloe’s bed. Chloe had not moved since she woke up. Which was a good thing.

  David shifted slightly, turning to face the armored woman. He smelled the taint on her. It was like wading through a pond of shit. It was harsh to his senses.

  “When did it happen?” David asked, leaning to the side so he could see Alice. She seemed stunned at first, then she scoffed, brushing past Selass to stand in front. The taint was a roaring flame in her. Her sickness was gone. And so was her glow.

  She had a strange iridescence to her, as if every spectrum of light filtered out of her skin. Her eyes had lost the softness she once possessed. That luring goodness that made him trust her before. She’d been undone, completely transformed from within.

  “What do you mean?” Alice asked. It wasn’t even her voice. It was something else. Another’s so different it repulsed David. “We have always been like this. It is you that have changed, David. You think yourself a god, don’t you? The conqueror of the first tower, carver of history.” Alice snarled, a viper’s smile spreading across her face.

  “You are nothing, David. None of you are. You are scared little kids playing in a world you have no idea about. But I can show you that there is something better. Lord Balek can show you the truth that is untethered. You will be free, just like us.”

  David’s brow quirked up, a grin spreading over his face. Now, looking closely, he found slight imperfections that he hadn’t seen before. The air was too damp, and the smell of rot was everywhere. Selass’s armor was too bloody. And Elisha’s armor seemed dull, as if he’d lost the glow he liked so much.

  When he noticed one error, his eyes were drawn to more.

  Carlos’s rune-covered skin looked strange, as though most of the runes were unfinished.

  “This is a dream,” David whispered. “Isn’t it, Balek?”

  Silence flowed through the room. No one moved or spoke. Alice’s smile vanished, and Selass‘s frame seemed to settle as if all the fight had been squeezed out of her. David chuckled, turning away from the window. The sky would stir, but dawn would never come. Not in here anyway.

  “You can come out now,” David called. “I thought there were rules? I thought you couldn’t intervene?”

  “I have done no such thing,” Balek said, his voice hissing out of Elisha’s helmed face. David scowled at that. He didn’t like his brother’s form used as Balek’s mouthpiece. His hand twitched to summon his sword, but he had no delusion of possibly wounding the tower god.

  “You went through the trouble of coming here, Balek. What do you want? I have things to do.”

  “I can hold you here for as long as I want,” Carlos said. His face spread in a smile. The skin under his shirt glowed, and the earth beneath David’s feet trembled.

  David looked down as the stone lifted to trap him within four thick slabs of stone.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “You can’t trap me in my own dream,” David warned. Balek scoffed. The look of disappointment in Chloe’s eyes pierced David like a hot knife going through his veins.

  “A new tower king, trying to tell me what I can do in my domain. How na?ve. You have been given a seat, but it is still the lowest. I can take you all the way up, David. All of you. I can show you what real power feels like.”

  “I refuse,” David said. His hands were locked on both sides. He couldn’t move anything except his neck. “You think I’d become one of your puppets? Leashed to do your bidding even as my soul blackens? You expect me to sell what little agency I have bled and sweated to get, just to be powerful?”

  None of Balek’s avatars spoke. They watched David with changing expressions—amusement, disdain, interest, disgust, joy.

  Zoey laughed. The perverse sound struck something in David. It scraped him raw to watch his family used like this. Their faces moved in ways they would never have moved before. Even Dellon had a manic grin on, his eyes wild with delight.

  “You misunderstand,” Balek continued, using Alice’s soft voice. If David closed his eyes, he could believe it was the woman speaking. “You think every step you have taken from Amareth’s inferior work to mine has been your choice, child? Don’t lie to yourself. I know you can feel the many strings guiding you. Samecan be said for all humans. You are all sheep, led about by an invisible herder. Now and again, the herder changes, but it is the same control. You have no choice, you never did.

  David pushed against the stones. He couldn’t feel any wisp of essence here. It made him hollow, emptied out. But before he learned to use essence, he was far from weak. He closed his eyes and pushed, turning Balek’s voice into soft echoes in the background of his thoughts.

  He heard something groan, then felt the stone to the right give a little. He opened his eyes to find the stone transforming into a kind of liquid he’d never seen before. It stretched when he pushed against it, then tightened.

  David’s arm ached. He gritted through the building pain. He couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to keep listening. Balek’s voice filtered into his mind, delighted by his suffering. Yet, there was something else he could feel. Longing? David flinched from the thought. His body shuddered with disgust.

  Alice grinned, as did the others. They mocked him with their eyes. His exhaustion was like an exaltation for them. For Balek. The tower god had turned his dream into a prison. He was weak here, defeated.

  “You roam unimpeded,” David said through labored breath. He hadn’t expected to use this much strength. “You move from tower to tower. You poison everything, spreading ruin. I wonder, to what does this serve? A god should have a purpose. You have none. You destroy to amuse yourself. You are not a god, Balek. You are a disease. A blight on the rest of us. Do you think you are unique? You are not.”

  David hung his head sideways, steadying his breath. His eyes focused on Alice. He hadn’t noticed before, good health made her glow. She smiled, nodding.

  “You are right,” Balek muttered. Alice made a casual gesture and a portion of the floor slowly molded into a large throne. It was bare, but tall-backed. The surface was smoothened; the stones refined beyond anything David had ever seen.

  Alice sat down, contemplative, with a tinge of pleasure in her eyes. “I am unlike the others. I am not tethered by principles and morals. I shed that part of me when I ascended. I am not human, David. We are not to be measured by the limited scope of human understanding. This is where you are wrong, though.”

  David sighed, resigned to the torture of listening to the god.

  “I don’t care anymore,” David muttered. Even though this was a dream, he still felt the beginning of an itch on the edge of his shoulder. Alice seemed wounded, but that vanished almost immediately. Replaced by an expression David couldn’t divine.

  “Your resistance is admirable,” Balek said. “But it will bore me soon. And when it does, I will fall on you with the whole weight of my disappointment, David. You will lose. There is no way you will win here. This tower is unlike any other. While some of my peers aim to teach and empower, I torment. Why struggle? Why suffer?”

  David chuckled. It was a dry, tired sound. But then he began to laugh in earnest. Alice’s amusement vanished. And as David laughed, the thing around him tightened. David’s laughter subsided, replaced by fits of coughing. Blood oozed out of his ears and the edge of his eyes. His vision danced as if he was under water.

  He hadn’t even noticed when the others vanished, leaving only Alice in the room with him. He grinned, feeling victorious even though he felt weak before the god of the tower.

  He felt no fear.

  No regret.

  “I told you this before, Balek. But you must feel it now, don’t you? See how you beg and bait. Your machinations are very human. Even worse, you don’t notice how far you have sunk. There is nothing godly about this. It shows weakness. But you know, don’t you? You feel it.”

  David swallowed the blood in his mouth. Everything felt so real. The sharp tanginess on his tongue, the pain from the cracked bones, the floor beneath him, and the wind.

  The wind most of all.

  “How long will you hold?” Alice’s voice said. Then she shook her head and waved her hand. The binding vanished, and David crumbled. The relief was so sweet he almost wept. He looked up to find Alice watching him. There was hate in her eyes, but hunger too. Like a predator watching its fattened prey.

  “You’ll come to me,” Balek said, his true voice now. “I will wait. I have time. All you have is the horror that awaits you.”

  The dream dissolved, and David woke up to someone shaking him roughly. His sword appeared in his hand, but a familiar voice screamed for him to stop. His sword stopped only inches from Gis’ throat. Everyone froze. Beside the terrified woman’s face, David saw the tower message he’d been waiting for before he dozed off.

  [You have conquered Lord Izren’s domain]

  [You have broken the accursed spell]

  [You have freed the people of Hormfirth!]

  [% 5 of Ruler Authority restored]

  [You have acquired an item: History of Ky-Anthur]

  The history of Ky-Anthur is the records of Malafin, the great sage. It chronicles his journeys and encounters. Tales of his adventures with the fragments and how he learned to hone the power of the fragments. Many pages have been lost, but some remain.

  A book? Ignis asked.

  David pulled his blade away from Gis. She trembled like a leaf, scrambling from him. Carlos pulled her into a hug. Zoey walked over to David, worry in her eyes. Chloe stood next to Elisha, her cheeks wet.

  “How long—” The light from the window above him answered his question. It was morning already. He took in the whole crowd now. Alice was near the door. Selass and Dellon too. The old man waved. David bowed slightly. He was still trying to reorient himself.

  “What happened?” Zoey asked. “You wouldn’t wake. Even after Selass whammied you a few times.”

  David glared at the woman. She didn’t flinch. Alice grinned beside her. “She was just trying to help.”

  “True,” Selass echoed. “I wasn’t punishing you for running away, Lord David.” She gave him a mocking smile.

  “We have to go,” David said, standing up. Zoey pulled him to his feet with Carlos’ help. Gis seemed to have calmed down, but she wouldn’t go near him. David gave her an apologetic smile.

  “You should be able to leave now,” David said to Alice. “But you won’t, right?”

  “No.”

  David nodded. He’d suspected as much. She was weak, she couldn’t go up the tower. He guessed what she wanted was a way out of the tower entirely.

  Later, after they had eaten and cleaned up, the six of them walked to an eight-foot portal shaped like a door. It shone next to the large tree. David adjusted the sack of supplies Alice gave them. The rope dug into his neck, but the weight was comforting. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be stranded wherever they were going.

  “I hope I don’t see you again,” Selass said, waving at them as they walked through one after the other.