All too soon after, I was back on the Firebrand, back in the virtual realm, being debriefed by Bruzigan. Arvallei was present too, since he had been in charge of preparing me, and Mewi was as well, since I wanted him to hear the rest of the story of my experience on the 4th Floor.

He was, therefore, the only other one in the session who knew the whole story. I told Bruzigan and Arvallei that I’d triggered a hidden mission, and that was why I’d gone off-plan, but I’d left out the fact that it was considered to be a higher difficulty level than Extreme. They chalked it up to hidden missions always being at least somewhat tougher than a normal mission, unless you took a huge penalty on the reward, and bad luck that it was so much harder.

Eventually, I got to the part where I set the forest ablaze with 30,000 troops in it. “And the Tower gave me an achievement for it, and...”

I showed them the fully upgraded Class Evolver. “The reward for it basically did this.”

Mewi was in shock. “You--you didn’t use it?”

“No, of course not. It was always the plan for you to use the first one we max out,” I said, a bit confused, “you didn’t forget did you?”

“No, I just—forget I said anything. I just thought for a moment like, I’ve been doing fine getting good ratings without evolving my class, it’s not like I need the evolution to make sure the other Class Evolver fully upgrades.”

“It still makes the most sense for you to use the first one,” Bruzigan pointed out, “since you’ll be upgrading 3 times instead of 2.”

“I know, I know,” said Mewi, his face red, “so, what happened after?”

I glossed through most of the details after getting the Class Evolver Upgrading Rune, since at that point I had effectively completed the normal floor mission. Then, the discussion turned to my reward items. The mission reward items turned out to be good, but not great. The Veil Glass was a ten-use consumable that looked like a round piece of seaglass that, when I looked through it at somebody, a number would appear that indicated how many extra lives they had left. It thwarted any obscurations of that data just like Lumis’ Key of Truth, but only for that single point of information. It'd be useful to use against more anti-fed assassins, to determine whether they could come back at me again or not.

The cookbook was a very thorough listing of a great number of Grade 1 and 2 recipes, which would make it a lot easier to continue my Chef training as well as decide which recipes to focus on making for the team before and during missions.

“But that is odd that you got yet another Magical Map,” said Bruzigan, “it’s not usual for the Tower to give duplicate rewards for ratings higher than 3.0.”

“They seem to have a special effect when used in dungeons,” I said, “maybe it’s something to do with that?”

“The 8th Floor is basically nothing but dungeons,” said Bruzigan, nodding, “but we’re still months away from that. Lheticus? What’s wrong?”

He must have seen the look on my face. “I just had a pretty horrible thought,” I admitted. “It has to do with these ‘dream visions’ I’ve been having. I actually had four more of them over the course of the 4th Floor. The first two of them didn’t tell me much, but in the third—the fifth overall—I saw Mewi and I exiting a Floor...and Toto was on our team.”

Arvallei broke in. “You teamed up with the Rainbow Mage?”

“That’s the thing,” I said, shaking my head emphatically, “he definitely wasn’t the Rainbow Mage. The other teammates weren’t those kids I sparred against either. In fact, he was the only one who didn’t stick with the team.

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On top of that, we’d done High difficulty, and he was talking about going back down to Medium. The Rainbow Mage I’ve met, I don’t think he’d go lower than Extreme.”

“That is strange,” said Arvallei, folding his wings, “hang on—what was the description of the trait that gives you these dreams, again?”

I opened my status and read from the trait. “When sleeping, occasionally experience dreams that show visions of a certain time. You will always remember these dreams perfectly upon waking.”

“A certain time...a certain time...” said Arvallei, his eyes slowing going wide, “what if...but no, that’s just crazy isn’t it?”

I stared at him. “What’s crazy? I’m no stranger to crazy, I’m not gonna laugh in your face.”

“What if...by ‘a certain time’ the description means a different timeline? I think you mentioned once, wasn’t that time I asked about your dream visions when we were training for the 4th Floor?”

“We were taking a quick break, as I remember it.”

“Yeah, and you told me about them then. Some of what you saw in the visions definitely would have happened already, if they were going to happen. Like you and Mewi deciding to refuse to join any faction. But you didn’t do that.”

“Are you saying,” my own eyes snapping fully open from their usual narrow half-lidded state as the implications began to land, “that I’m seeing into an alternate Tower universe? I mean, I definitely would have reacted the way I did in that vision, not wanting to get involved with the factions at all, if--”

My jaw involuntarily dropped open. I barely even got the next words out. “If the Rainbow Mage hadn’t had me fight against his team. Holy shit. Holy shit! I think I’ve got it! Yeah, that’s gotta be it!”

“What’s gotta be it?” said Mewi, sounding extra confused while Bruzigan and Arvallei looked equally so.

“What, you don’t see it? That’s how Toto was able to get so strong! He’s on a New Game Plus!”

“A...New Game Plus?” Bruzigan sounded downright bewildered.

“He’s the reason this timeline is different! If I hadn’t bumped into him, I never would have pushed myself to the training I took to clear Extreme difficulty. Probably I’d have just wanted to live in peace here until the Sanctuaries fell. So, I never would have joined your team. Probably, this team never would have formed, right?”

“Most likely, yes...” said Bruzigan, now thoughtful.

“And I’d bet Brocks to kumquats that he’d previously passed the Federation information about the start of the war. Particularly, about when the antifeds planned to strike first.”

“I’m not at liberty to confirm or deny that,” said Bruzigan, but he said it in such a way that left it all but certain I was right.

“He couldn’t mention that the start of the war would involve the Sanctuaries falling, though,” I continued, “him having that information would be way too suspicious. But he did what he could.

I think that the dreams I’ve been having are giving me glimpses into the Tower’s original timeline, bits and pieces of it that I was involved in. And for some reason, at some point, Toto somehow went back in time to the very start of his Tower climb.

Then when he bumped into me on Marital, it really was a coincidence. But he noticed me, recognized me, and decided to take a stab at changing my fate. Most likely, because I had saved his life on the 5th Floor—he mentioned in the vision I saw him in that he’d had a lot of close calls. He might have seen it as repaying a favor, even if it was one I didn’t remember.”

Bruzigan rocked back on his heels. “As absolutely crazy as what you’re saying is, I have to admit it somehow makes way more sense, given what we know of the Rainbow Mage, than him just deciding to train you real quick out of the blue. Especially with the circumstances he was in at the time.”

“There’s one thing I don’t get,” said Arvallei, then with an embarrassed look, “okay there’s a lot I don’t get, even though I basically started this train of thought, but what I want to know is, why would he believe changing your fate to be doing you a favor? Did something bad happen in the original timeline? If it is the original timeline.”

“That’s...” I looked at Mewi. He was barely holding together. He looked like he wanted to run to me and break down in my arms. Oh God. He’s already worked it out too.

“I think,” said Mewi, in a choked voice, “I think it’s because I died.”