The Mess Hall sat empty when I arrived, the tables cleared and the silence echoing. My father had spent so long haranguing the Summoner Elder that I’d missed lunch. My stomach cramped, and I wasn’t sure if it was hunger or anxiety over my predicament. On the one hand, I hadn’t eaten anything except the Healer Devout’s boxy cake-bread thing since entering the Tower the day before, and my body certainly knew it. A few of the Summoners had been eating live coals and demon slugs to show off their impervious mouths the night before during our chop game, but as I lacked the Iron Tongue mastery, I had abstained. On the other hand, every time I thought about winning the next Melee, I wanted to vomit, and even if I had a feast in front of me I wasn’t sure I’d be able to force myself to eat. What am I going to do? How am I going to do this?

I’d been hoping to see Sett and his friends in the Mess, I realized. I’d wanted to sit down with them, tell them my troubles, and hear their advice. It was an odd thought – Sett was a decent fellow, but it wasn’t as if we knew each other all that well despite the dozen or so sparring matches we’d arranged back when he was in the Crim and I was sneaking out of my father’s house. Blessed Saints, I barely knew the others’ names, and I didn’t even remotely like Aldric. Yet here I was, seeking them out in my moment of need.

Trying to, at least. My father’s threat to strip me of comfort and help was already proving true, and he hadn’t even really started to make good on it yet. Think, Maphen. How can you win the Melee?

Standing and staring at empty tables and benches wasn’t going to help. I turned back to the doorway just as a young man a few years older than me came trundling through, a full bucket in one hand and a thick-bristled brush in the other.

“Sorry, can you help me?” I said. “I’m new. I’ve gotten separated from the others and I’m not sure where to go.”

He scowled and looked at the floor. “Not supposed to talk to us.”

I pulled up short. “What? Why not?” Has Father gotten to the staff already? Impossible.

He looked up from under a heavy brow with an ugly look. “It reminds us.”

Maybe this wasn’t about me. “I don’t understand. Reminds you of what?”

The boy sucked at his teeth as if he wanted to spit on the floor. He was a big, strong bear of a fellow, and I didn’t want to run afoul of him. For whatever reason, though, his look lost a little of its hostility as he saw my confusion. “They didn’t tell you? They’re supposed to tell you right up front.”

I spread my hands and let them drop to my sides in an exaggerated shrug. “Nobody’s telling me anything. I’m doing it all wrong, and they’re going to kick me out if I can’t stop it.” It was more than I wanted to tell him, but once I opened my mouth, I couldn’t stop my desperation and anger from leaking out.

His face softened even more, and he put down his bucket, crossing to me and sitting me down on the nearest bench before thumping down beside me. “It’s okay if they do, you know. That’s the rest of us you see here, and that’s why they ask you not to talk to us for the first little bit after you go Neophyte. Takes the sting out of it. I’m you, d’you see? I flunked out. Couldn’t hack it. They won’t let us go home after we pass the Door Test, but we can’t be the holy warriors, neither. So unless we want to do a runner for the top of the Tower, we have to stay and mop the floors. Change the beds. Make the food.”

I thought of my father’s surprising admission that he’d passed the Tower Door Test – he’d never told me that! – and it all started to make sense. “What happened to you?” I asked. “Do you mind me asking?”

He tipped his head back and stared at the distant ceiling, his close-cropped black hair bristling in all directions. “I took a stick in the eye during the first Melee. Didn’t die, just sat there spewing blood and eye juice for an hour while the others duked it out for the top. When I tell you it hurt, I’m not sure that covers it. I’d rather put my face in a fire than live through that again. At our first sit-down afterwards, they gave us all one last chance to back out, and I took it. Stood up in the middle of everybody and said no thanks. Sharell can sort out its own shit without my help. What good would someone like me even do in the Celestial Realm? Can’t say I regret it, really, but when you see those big Deacon and Elder bastards walking around all glowy and super tall, it makes a man wonder.” He snapped back from his reverie, threw me a smile, and clapped me on the shoulder. “So don’t go asking the help for directions until you’ve settled in and got the feel for things, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said, standing. “It’s nice to remember for a second that I’m as good as any of you. I’m Steg. If you see me, I’ll give you a hand. The rest of ‘em trooped off to the Cathedral not more than fifteen minutes ago. Out the door to the left, take your third right, and look for the big wooden double doors. If you hurry, you won’t miss much.”

I jumped up and started for the door. “Thank you, Steg. I really appreciate it.”

“Hey,” he called just as I was about to round the corner. I stopped and looked back, and he was staring at me, his bucket back in hand. “If you wash out, don’t let them tell you you’re a failure. You can come wash floors with me and we’ll outlive all those shiny fools.”

I nodded and threw him a salute before sprinting down the hallway. It was nice to know there was someone out there who’d still think I was a worthwhile person if Father got me thrown out, but I did not intend to let that happen. How are you going to stop it, huh? You have no idea. Well, one way or the other, this meeting in the Cathedral was obviously important – it was the first time they were sitting us all down together to teach us something – and I wasn’t going to miss it. I heard a high-pitched demonic giggle as I ran and instinctively ducked. It was that same little shit-happy monster that had befouled me yesterday, I was sure of it, and I didn’t want to get bombed again. I kept an eye out even as I bolted, but it never materialized, and neither did its feces.

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I arrived at the gargantuan double doors Steg had told me about, paused to catch my breath so I wouldn’t look like quite so much a fool when I entered, then pushed one big portal open just far enough to slip through. Despite towering three times higher than my head, the door moved smoothly and soundlessly.

I had to stop and gape before I went any further. The buttressed walls rose a good thirty meters high before crowning in criss-crossed naves of beautifully worked stone. The Cathedral had to have been a few hundred meters or more from end to end – possibly wider than the exterior of the Tower itself, which would never cease to boggle my mind no matter how many times I saw it happen – with stained glass windows flanking the walls on both sides that showed scenes of the Aspects in battle with demons and other things I couldn’t identify. The other Neophytes were huddled in a small group near the far end under the watchful gaze of someone, likely a Deacon given his size, who was speaking in loud, echoing tones to all of them. Something huge hulked unseen beneath a draping sheet behind the altar, which the teacher was leaning on.

“...if the toll of your deaths weighs too heavily on your mind, speak now. If your heart is quailing, do not hope and wish that somehow you can tough it out: I assure you that the same and worse will happen again and again and again. There is no shame in taking a place with the staff. You can take pride in how far you have come, which is farther than most of the gormek outside will ever comprehend. You are still part of the Awoken, and you need not break your mind and soul on a battle that others can fight. Stay and help. You will lose your mantle and the mastery you were given, it is true, but you will gain peace of mind in return. Think: even the mightiest warrior needs a host of others to support them. You can live in the Tower and help with the War Above without having to face your own death until, like everyone, you reach the age of last resort.” He raised his hands wide and bowed his great head, his mane of chestnut locks tumbling forward – he was an Artisan Deacon, by his coloring – giving all the gathered students a curious little bow. “If your heart knows that I am speaking to you, rise without doubt and without guilt. There is a place for you.”

It sounded as if he were giving them all the speech that Steg had mentioned. Even though I was still halfway back in the pews, I sat down hastily, fearful that someone would think I was taking his offer because I was on my feet. Uncomfortable silence reigned for ten seconds, then twenty. He was waiting to see who spoke. It won’t be me.

“Fine,” growled a boy in a red tunic. He rose slowly, his hands balled into fists. “Demon at the door ripped my arms off before it finally got around to my heart, but I was okay with that. Little red one after ate at my belly like it tasted as good as apple pie, but I figure, ‘Know your enemy,’ like we was taught. Then in the Melee, someone I thought was my Crim brother, and Warrior brother besides, sucker punched me before I even made it to the hill, ripping half my face off.” He looked right at Aldric as he said it, and I saw that for once the snide boy didn’t say a peep back or match the other’s eyes. “Everyone ran by me after, nobody offering to help,” the standing boy continued, “until one of you shoved something sharp into my neck. Not to put me out of my misery, nah. Heard him count as he said.” He shifted his gaze to the black-tunicked group, but neither of the two boy Assassins reacted with any guilt or remorse. “Is this how it’s going to be? Us turning on each other the whole time?” He glared at the assembled Neophytes for answers, but none gave him any. “I thought we were here to win a war together!”

His defiant words echoed in the great chamber, bouncing and returning until they died away into nothing. If he sensed the defeat in that, he didn’t show it. He pushed past his fellow Warriors to get to the aisle and face the Deacon, fists still at the ready. The teacher merely nodded calmly to him and held up one great hand to gesture toward the doors I’d just come through. With a huff of anger, the boy marched back up the aisle. As he approached me, I could see the vitality and power draining out of him. He was losing his mantle. From the faltering of his steps and the sudden tears springing from his eyes, he knew it. By the time he reached me, he’d wiped the tears away and regained his stride. He gave me a cold look and stormed past. I barely spared him a glance. I wanted to see if anyone else would break.

It didn’t take long. A girl in red stumbled to her feet, scurrying for the door. She had no brave words or defiant gestures; she just tucked her head and went. Then came a boy in brown, then another boy in yellow, as if the capitulation of the others made their own defeat easier to bear. Quite likely it did. They came past me one by one. The boy in brown was whistling and gave me a wink, but the other two didn’t even look my way. That was best; I didn’t know them and I didn’t want to. I was close enough to the stain of disgrace myself that I couldn’t afford to care about others who weren’t up to the task in front of us.

There was another long pause, and I thought maybe it was done, but then the Deacon moved to one side, stopping in front of a girl in yellow in the front row. Her pale head was bowed, and he put a gentle hand on her shoulder. The girl broke into heart-rending sobs that filled the holy space, collapsing in on herself, head in hands. The teacher squatted down in front of her and spoke soft, kind words that I couldn’t quite make out, his hand still on her shoulder.

After a moment of whispered conference, the girl stood and made her shaky way to the center aisle. My heart clenched when I saw her face. It was Holry, the girl who’d gone through the Threshing with me and died hard in the process. I hadn’t seen much of her in the Melee, but from her tear-stained face, it hadn’t gone any better. Her mouth twisted in despair, or maybe self-loathing, as the Deacon walked partway up the aisle with her, whispering encouragement as she went. Finally, he let her go, and she tottered past the empty seats toward me. I’d never seen someone look so bereft.

She was one of us. I helped her. She made jokes. How can she give up?

She must have been thinking similar thoughts, because when she noticed me, she looked immediately away, her chest hitching with renewed sobs. She ran the last twenty meters out of the Cathedral.

It could have been me. The thought didn’t even make good sense, not in a rational kind of way, but it still hit me hard. It could still be me.

The Deacon beckoned to me, pointing to the pews where the others were. Trying to shake my sudden unease, I rose and went to the last row where the others sat. Sett, Tamra, and Aldric all sat together, looking healthy and strong in their red tunics, if a little dismayed that their friends had just quit on them. Looking at the array of brightly-colored tunics before me, I felt keenly how poorly I fit in with my dirty gray robe from the Threshing. These are the true fighters for Sharell. Can I really belong with them? I wanted to, I intended to, but suddenly, after seeing Holry leave in abject misery, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to. Sett patted me gently on the hand as I took a seat next to him, but he looked distracted and sad. I felt the same way.

“All right,” the Deacon said, breaking the spell. “Now that the remaining weak among you have been culled, it’s time to begin. The others weren’t worthy of this knowledge, but today you – the Neophytes of the Tower – will learn the true secrets of this place.”

He paused for effect, his golden-brown eyes glittering. “Let’s talk about the Celestial Realm.”