Perhaps it was because of the noise from Bailey yelling, or having just seen Sam take off, but Leo noticed that others were starting to appear around them. His attention was first drawn to one of the instinctive with two huge antlers which were adorned with about twenty menacing points, and he stood whispering to someone with two smaller, rounded horns. Both had a large hump on their back and were coated in brown fur, though the one with smaller horns had longer hair on his chest which shortened as it went down his body.

‘What do we do?’ Kaira whispered.

‘Act normal,’ uttered Dorian.

‘Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?’

More instinctive gathered, though no-one approached the four children. After an awkward and anxious half stare off with no-one making a sound, someone let out a shrill whistle and they all disappeared.

‘That was weird,’ Leo muttered.

Moments later, Sam appeared overhead. Without stopping, he lowered himself onto Dorian, who winced as his talons sunk in and hoisted him into the air.

After Dorian had gone from view, the instinctive who had run away slowly came back to stare at Leo and Kaira.

‘What are you doing?’ someone asked.

Leo looked around to see who had asked the question, and as he did so, someone let out a low whistle. Peering out from behind a tree, a man stood anxiously with his arms raised in front of his chest.

‘What are you doing?’ he repeated.

‘We’re waiting,’ Leo answered.

Those who had gathered whispered for a moment before looking back to the whistler.

‘Waiting for what?’

‘For a lift to some place called Regnum.’

‘What are you doing with him?’ the man asked, his black nose twitching as he lightly stroked the small, round and light brown ears on his head.

‘He’s my brother.’

More whispers.

‘How come we have never seen you before?’ another member asked. This lady was coated in a bright fluffy white coat and had long ears which arrowed up into the air. She must have the instincts of a hare, Leo thought.

‘What’s it matter to you?’ questioned Kaira.

They murmured to each other again before the lady looked back.

‘Do you know who you are with?’

‘Yeah. He’s my brother.’

‘You know he’s with Arctier?’

‘And he just left us with Sam.’

The lady and the short, brown-haired man looked at each other before the lady hopped towards them, her feet having grown so large it was seemingly impossible to walk.

‘Why has he left you?’ she whispered, her ears twisting.

‘He’s taking my friends to Regnum and then coming back for us,’ Leo said, thinking it was kind of obvious.

‘Not Sam. Why did Arctier leave you?’ she hopped.

‘Oh, I don’t know. He said he had to take care of something.’

She looked around to those who had come with her, her little black nose giving a little twitch. As she looked the other way, Leo caught sight of her imprint where snow topped mountains glowed on her left shoulder blade.

‘Your imprint is Arctier’s, isn’t it?’ Leo asked.

Before she could answer, the same whistle of before rang out from the trees. Her eyes widened, and the lady quickly hopped back and hid with everyone else.

‘What are you doing?’ Leo called out. But his question was answered a moment later as his brother’s silhouette appeared above them.

Not one person was left in the area as Sam dropped down towards Kaira with a steady beat of his wings. And moments later, he rose with her prised in his talons.

‘Can you loosen your grip?’ she said through gritted teeth while trying to force his talons to open.

‘Do you want to fall?’

‘Don’t pretend that...’

Whatever Kaira was about to say was lost on Leo as they flew off towards the capital.

As the area got quieter, every sound became more significant than the last, with Leo feeling as though there were more unseen eyes resting on him than he could see. As a branch cracked from beside him, Leo found himself backing up against a tree.

Eyes filtered out into the clearing once again, though this time, Leo found it a lot trickier to just, ‘act normal', with no one by his side. The first sets of eyes belonged to people he had not seen before, and so Leo felt an odd sense of relief at the sight of the lady with the hare like features coming slowly towards him, her eyes wide and constantly checking her surroundings.

‘Be careful,’ she whispered, ‘Libero can be a dangerous place. Choose your friends wisely.’

‘But that’s just Sam,’ Leo almost laughed.

‘He may have been your brother. But people change here.’

‘He still seems the same to me.’

‘Maybe. I do not know who he used to be. But I have heard things about who he is now.’

‘Like what?’

‘They are not things I will be heard telling anyone, not least his brother,’ she said, her ears bent all the way back.

‘Well don’t worry, he’ll be coming home with me soon,’ Leo said, trying to sound confident about the task at hand.

‘Good luck. I do not know of anyone who has managed to get back to Earth once they got here,’ she said in a hushed voice, ‘especially once they have got one of these.’

The lady turned her back and showed Leo her shining imprint.

‘You want to leave?’ he asked.

The crowd erupted into a flurry of whispers as she looked at him with a worried glance.

‘Ok, don't answer that. How did you get here?’

‘I was a paramedic. My town was hit by an enormous blizzard and I was on my way to the fifth call of the night. That’s the last thing I remember before waking up here.’

‘You didn’t choose to come?’

‘No-one chooses. You are chosen.’

Leo looked at those who kept their distance and saw a panic he had not seen in the eyes of anyone they had come across so far.

‘How do they choose?’

Just as she went to answer, the man in the bushes whistled again, and she immediately hopped from sight as Sam flew above.

A sharp pain tore through Leo’s shoulders as his brother gripped his talons into him, and he made the same wincing face as his friends had done.

‘This is Leo from air traffic control into Sam. You are clear for take-off,’ Leo said through gritted teeth.

‘Copy that air control,’ replied Sam, and Leo heard the smirk in his voice.

‘Have a safe flight.’

‘Oh, we will. Passenger, this is your captain with some health and safety pointers. If we encounter any difficulties mid-flight, please enter a foetal position and brace for impact,’ Sam said, clearly recalling the days he and Leo used to play with their toy planes.

‘Well, let’s cross that bridge if we come to it shall we,’ Leo said, feeling his feet leave the floor as Sam beat his wings and lifted them at an impressively increasing pace.

Leo looked around as they rose, glancing between the trees and spotting some of those who had gathered below. He saw the man and the lady he had spoken to, and they simply stared after them with a mournful look in their eye.

Having watched the people below for as long as he could, Leo’s attention was drawn elsewhere as they broke free of the treetops. Forgetting about the pain in his shoulders, his breath left him as he was greeted by the sight of Libero in full.

Immediately around him were the trees they had walked through, mixed with those they had first arrived in on his left. They flew beside the river that trailed down from the lake they had walked from earlier that day. On the other side of the river, the land became sparser, only dotted with a few of the trees found in Taiga. Pale rock completely dominated the land, starting as hillsides and valleys that got bigger and bigger to become huge mountainsides that ran back as far as Leo could see. Saxum culminated in the distance with four tremendous mountains, three of which had jagged peaks that sloped inwards towards the one in-between, which had a peak that was split into two.

‘Is that where we were going?’ Leo asked, grimacing as he raised his arm to point at the mountains.

‘That’s where I live,’ Sam said, ‘but we are going there now.’

Sam tilted his wing so that Leo was forced to look straight ahead, towards a large crater that looked as though an asteroid had smashed directly into Libero’s centre.

‘That’s the capital?’

‘That’s Regnum.’

Sam held his wings steady as they glided through the air, the wind causing Leo’s growing hair to drag behind him. Eyes stinging and streaming, Leo fought to keep them open as he tried to take everything in.

Fallen trees formed a dam in one of the rivers they flew over, and as Leo looked down, he saw people with the instinct of otters and beavers playing in the water that flowed through grass and rock towards marshlands.

‘Ouch!’ Leo yelled as his brother brought them to a sharp stop in mid-air.

‘Quit moaning. Mouth closed. Eyes open. Just look.’

Sam kept them in the same spot and gently rotated in a circle.

‘Welcome to Libero, Leo,’ he said, ‘do you see what I see now?’

Leo looked for where his brother was looking, before realising he simply meant everything around them.

Sam held them level for a while, the fading sun just starting to dip behind a huge volcano. Dotted with red rocks and few plants, the volcano stood out from its surroundings in a vast desert that stretched out behind Regnum. But the thing that truly astounded Leo was the amount of life there was. Everywhere he looked he saw people going about their lives infused with abilities he had never dreamt of before. Leo was watching people live out the purest form of freedom, and now he was part of it.

 ‘I’m starting to,’ he conceded.

With the very slightest shift, Sam drifted them down towards the edge of the capital.

On their side of the crater, great rocks surrounded the rim and descended towards the centre. On the craters edge, Leo saw his friends awkwardly looking at those who walked past them and descended the rocky path.

‘Nice of you to drop in,’ smirked Dorian.

‘Just … don’t. He made the same joke to me,’ Kaira sighed, slapping her palm against her forehead as Leo touched down.

‘That’s better!’ exclaimed Leo, as his feet touched solid ground and his brother released his talons, before landing gracefully next to him.

‘Look, I’m going to let you guys explore Regnum. You’ll be safe in there,’ Sam said simply.

‘Why? Where are you going?’ Leo asked as Sam folded his wings behind his back.

‘Don’t you think papa bear will be angry with you if you leave us?’ Kaira taunted, tilting her head to allow her long, orange, and black hair to fall beside her face.

‘Why do you stay with him anyway?’ asked Leo.

‘He was the one that took me in,’ Sam said, ignoring Kaira, ‘it was only me and Hannah at first. We were lost until he came along.’

‘What about those living here?’

‘You try coming to another world and then approaching people who’ve transformed into different animals. We were not warned about what awaited us. We had no idea where we were or what had happened. We just kept trying to find our way home. We didn’t know we were in another world.’

‘But why him? Why’s it always the wrong crowd you manage to find?’

‘He didn’t give me a choice, Leo. Once he found out who I was, for some reason he treated me differently. He said I was special. No one has ever treated me like that,’ Sam gave his brother a dejected look, ‘he’s building something here, and he wants me to be a key part of it.’

‘What about Mum? She’s always given you everything you could ever want.’

‘But I have never been special enough for her, Leo. I have never been you. Here I can be me.’

‘You know that’s not true, Sam!’

‘And you know it is,’ he said, giving his brother a knowing look.

‘She loves us both and is worried sick. She hasn’t been the same person since you’ve been gone. Neither of us have.’

‘I’ve been thinking about this, Leo. I have found my place. The place where I belong. I’m sorry, but I won’t be coming home with you.’

‘Don’t be so selfish, Sam. If not for you, then what about for everyone else who is missing? What about all the other families who have been left not knowing?’ Kaira growled.

‘If you manage to get home then you can tell them what’s happened.’

‘They won’t believe us!’ said Leo.

‘There’s nothing I can do about that. Get to Isla and go home. She’ll be by the tree in the heart of Regnum. I’ll tell Arctier that you escaped me in the forest,’ Sam tried to smile, something he and Leo did not tend to do to each other.

‘Won’t that get you into trouble?’

‘What am I best at?’ Sam asked.

‘Getting in trouble?’

‘No. Getting out of it,’ he said.

‘I guess you’re right about that,’ chuckled Leo, ‘hey, do you remember when us two used to protect each other by pretending to be dogs?’

‘And we’d bark and growl at anyone who got too close to the other? Yeah, I remember. Who’d have thought that we’d end up in a world where that’s all too real?’ Sam said, spreading his wings.

 ‘Before you go, you know I came to get you because I miss you as well, right? You’re the biggest pain in the arse, but you are still my brother. It’s not the same without you at home,’ Leo said, resting a hand on his brother’s shoulder.

‘I miss you all as well. Maybe one day I’ll come back, but today’s not that day,’ he raised his wings higher, ‘get home safely and give Mum a hug from me. Tell her that I love her.’

‘I will,’ Leo said, just as his brother gave his wings a beat and took to the air, the four of them having to turn and cover their eyes as dust kicked up from the ground.

‘You’re just letting him go?’ Bailey asked, raising her arm to the rising Sam.

‘For now. There is not much more we could do. We could have forced him to stay with us but then how would we get anywhere? And what if Arctier has people following us or something. We would be dead meat the moment we tried anything. At least now we know where he is. So, if we can figure out how to get home, then we can plan with all the details in place. Let’s just focus on what’s in front of us.’

‘And what would you have us do first?’ Dorian asked.

 ‘Let’s follow them?’ Leo tried to nod his head nonchalantly towards a group of people who had come from the forest and were walking down the rocks.

‘I guess,’ Kaira agreed.

They eyed up the group they were following, one of whom had literal panda eyes and the fluffiest coat of black and white fur. Another member of the group had red fur with white patches on his face, and a big fluffy red tail that he held just above the rocks as they wandered, lost in conversation.

‘Wow!’ The word had escaped his lips before Leo had even reached the edge of the rock.

Capital cities of the Earth inspire thoughts of skyscrapers, of buildings shooting for the sky and waiting for the others to catch up. Sounds of those huffing and puffing as they wait for slower people to move out of their way as they rush to get to where they so desperately need to be. Honks of horns, sirens blaring, wheels screeching and engines revving. Smells of fried food escaping massive metal vents, as gasses from the underground burst from any hole or slit providing respite for those huddled below. Those people who have trained for this moment their entire lives, having eyed up their competition's weaknesses, any manners placed upon them from a young age now forgotten, as they prepare to barge, push, and fight their way onto the next train. Those were the immediate thoughts and memories of any city Leo had known.