Earth's Towers

Chapter II The Tower

We won't make it!" Yelled Oliver. Aiden turned around and saw that Oliver may be right. The corpses were about two hundred feet away, while the tower was about half a mile in front of them still.

"We have to make it," Aiden said, refusing to give up. They were all running faster than they had ever run before. Suddenly they all heard a screech behind them, Aiden turned to see that one of the corpses had tripped so all of them fell over one another and smacked into the ground.

"Don't stop!" Yelled Dawn.

"No dip." Stated Aiden. They all kept running until they were almost at the tower.

"There!" Shouted Alana, pointing at an old looking door at the base of the tower. One by one they all entered blindly into the dark tower. Just before the corpses reached the door, Remi slammed it shut. For a minute they stood in the dark, all of them sweating and panting. The tower lit up almost immediately, Aiden and the others looked around the now bright room. In front of them was another door only this door had three places to put hands. The rest of the room was black and purple and looked extremely slimy. Oliver took a step towards the other door and made a loud crunching noise. Very slowly he looked down to see he had stepped in a human ribcage. Oliver yelped loudly and they all now noticed the many humans remains on the floor. Alana and Dawn looked like they were going to throw up and were as white as the ribcage. Some of the remains looked like what Oliver had stepped in, very old. Others looked... newer. Remi looked horrified and disgusted and put her hand to her nose to block the horrific stench. Aiden's vision was blurry but he noticed all of the remains had many arrows sticking out of them. He looked to the floor where, along with the bodies, there was a tripwire which Aiden noticed was connected to an arrow trap.

"How did you-?" Started Oliver, but the door in front of them opened with a loud scraping sound. Behind the door was foggy so they couldn't see anything. Every one of them went completely silent. Something came running and screaming out of the door towards Aiden. He took the sharp bone and wacked the thing on the head. The door closed as the thing fell to the ground. Aiden looked down at what he hit and saw it was a...

"That's one of the things that was chasing us." Said Noah, his dark brown eyes filled with fear. Aiden nodded shaking. Noah's face was pale compared to his usual light brown skin. His curly dark brown hair was wet with sweat. Aiden was just now realizing how much shorter and thinner Noah was than him or even Oliver.

"What do you think those hand sockets do? And what do those words mean?" Dawn questioned. Aiden looked up and saw words in what looked like a different language. It said: do ofd nare tlehs.

"Any idea?" He asked the group. All of them shook their heads except for Noah, who looked at it thoughtfully.

"Backwards it is shelt eran dfo od. Which if you move the spacing it is shelter and food." He said, "I think if we put our hands on those outlines we get shelter and food." Remi jumped up and kissed him on the cheek.

"Oh, you're genius!" She shouted with a large smile.

"Or we become food." Stated Oliver, all the others looked at him funny. "What? It could be that." Noah touched his face where Remi had kissed him with a look of confusion, shock, and absolute joy.

"Well," Aiden said, "we're not going out the other door, so I guess we might as well try." The others reluctantly nodded.

"Step exactly where I step." Aiden started to walk very carefully looking at the ground without blinking. Eventually, they made it to the door. They all decided to have the three boys put their hands on the door on the outlines.

"Ready?" Aiden said nervously. The other two nodded grimly.

"Three," they all said together as the girls looked with interest and horror

"Two," they braced themselves for something bad to happen "One," they pushed their hands towards the outlines "NOW!" Aiden shouted as they pushed their hands in. The world started to go dark as the building started to shake and crumble and Aiden heard the girls shout in horror. Then everything went black.