I blinked the sudden brightness from my eyes and discovered that we were in a vast room again, similar to where we had been after entering the Tower. However, unlike that space, there was a strange pool in front of us. Strange because it appeared to be filled with milk instead of water and was only thigh-high--the low, black tiled wall that contained the liquid coming up to just over my knee. It was wide though, at least ten meters across, and had a soft glow to it, unless my sight was still affected by the transportation spell we had all been part of.

I turned away from the otherworldly pool, guilty that I had spent even that long being wonderstruck by it. Both Tamra and Aldric had died in ways that were much more complete than simple burning or dismemberment. Odd that I already thought of those other deaths as “lesser,” but I was sure it was all part of the trainers’ plan, to make death a regular experience and something we would not fear. What I was not sure about and did have some fear concerning was whether my siblings could and would be healed from such a state. Seeing Tamra disintegrate like that and Aldric melt…

It was worse than either time I had been killed by a demon.

Saints be praised, I only had to travel as far as looking behind myself to see them both again, whole and alive. Aldric was rather pale to be fair, checking himself over even, as if to reassure himself that his flesh wasn’t about to slide away; Tamra was unflappable as ever, pushing past me with a calloused hand on my shoulder.

“What’s that then?” she said.

I gave Aldric an encouraging nod when he finally looked my way and then caught up to her. It was only a few steps to the white pool, so we weren’t separated for long, and the other members of our group were gradually drifting over to join. Maphen, of course, had been there before Tamra and stood off to the side, as if wanting to put distance between himself and the rest of us. I found that nearly as odd as the pool, since he had always been amiable with me and others during the times we’d sparred together. I would have chalked it up to the deaths we’d been through, but he didn’t seem particularly shaken like Aldric’s current state or Holry’s before.

“Maybe she knows about it,” Orm said, joining us around the short pool wall while thumbing toward Iles.

“Her?” Tamra said, her long red hair nearly wapping me in the face when she turned to look at Orm and who he was pointing at. “Why would Iles know about this?”

The twin seemed confused by the question, and I was as well, until I remembered that Tamra had been dead before Iles had solved the puzzle sphere.

“She got us here,” I supplied. I didn’t bother talking loudly since everyone but Aldric already knew, and I didn’t think he’d care much.

“Ah!” Tamra said, taking a step over and slapping the other girl on the back. Iles was thinner and nearly toppled headfirst into the pool. “Good show. Glad I didn’t need to be dusted yet again in that Saints-forsaken place.”

“Happy to help,” Iles said, straightening. She looked over her narrow nose to where Orm stood. “And no, I don’t know anything about this. It could be alchemical in nature or a collection of raw Tower magic.”

Tamra grinned. “So you do know then.”

“What? No!” Iles said, flustered. The exchange would have likely continued but other voices turned our heads. Another group of seven was approaching the pool, all faces I knew well, from tall Gimit who spoke as loud as some would shout to sulky Fargle and his straight blonde hair that always seemed to find its way in front of his face. I noticed Orm looking for Oph among the others, but his twin wasn’t with this group.

“Ho there,” Gimit said to us. “Looks like we’re the first to make it.”

“We arrived before you,” Maphen said off to the side. There was a lisping quality to his speech that wasn’t normally there, and a quick look in his direction showed me raw lips. Was that the cost of the spell he had used to hold the small demon in place?

“Oho,” a familiar voice said. I knew before turning that it was Celeste, who was often talked about by the boys in the Crim, like Tamra, but for different reasons. Raven-haired Celeste might not beat you on the mat, but she’d make you pay threefold for it afterward. She was crossing the long way around the pool toward Maphen, her long ponytail bouncing against her back. “Haven’t seen you around before, dimples. You wander in from the Wilds?”

“Nah,” said Fargle’s nasally voice. “He’s local, I’ve seen him. Usually dresses nice for a gormek.”

“Am I going to have die again before you tell me who this guy is?” someone grunted beside me, and I turned to find Aldric there. He still looked two days sick, but I’d seen him in far worse condition before; once when Celeste poisoned him, actually, with moldroot shaved over his morning oats.

“Not much to tell,” I said, talking Tamra’s way too when she moved to listen. “Met half a year gone now, at the edge of town. We sparred some and ended up making a habit of it. We talked more about pressure points and proper leverage than anything else.”

“That’s what you were doing when we’d go get drunk at the Nib?” Aldric said.

Nearly on top of him, Tamra asked, “He any good?”

“WELCOME,” a voice boomed, making all of us jump.

The items we had possessed during our confrontation with the imp hadn’t transported with us, so it was bare hands we all raised, though I spotted Maphen working his mouth as if in preparation to speak magic again--apparently he thought the situation worth the pain.

Not that it was clear what the situation precisely was. I had assumed the room was quite large because I couldn’t see the ceiling or walls through the darkness, the only lights coming from a few hanging globes above us and the glowing pool. Considering it now though, we could very well be in a room that fell away on all sides if we walked too far from the pool, or perhaps we were in a vast cavern with no end – nearly anything was possible in the Tower, after all.

“Who’s there?” Tamra called, and in answer another group of faces who I knew appeared, spreading out against the side of the pool that Celeste had just crossed on her way to Maphen.

“Shanel,” Aldric said to a tall girl in the middle. “Was that you all before?”

“Before?” she said in a high-pitched voice that never matched her size. “We just got here. Had to kill that damn imp twice before we figured out the box in his chest.”

“LOOK INTO THE POOL,” the voice boomed again, causing Shanel’s group to jump.

“Shit!” a boy next to her named Tevo said, which caused Tamra and Gimit to laugh.

“SEE YOUR FUTURE.”

The swearing and laughter turned to uncertain murmurs among my brothers and sisters, but I didn’t hesitate. Every moment in the Crim and the short but bloody road through the Tower so far was all in service of our ascension. Why delay that any more than we must?

I bumped the end of my leather shoes against the hard black tile so I could lean as far over the pool as possible. Shockingly, my own square face stared back at me, clearer than I’d ever seen it before. I hadn’t realized I had freckles on my forehead or that my nose was quite so wide. I might have inspected myself longer, but the white pool rippled and suddenly I was bedecked in full-plate armor with an orangish tint, a large shield slung on my back, and the hilt of a sword coming up from my unseen belt. My gauntleted hand rested on the long pommel, and my other hand cradled a helmet that was two flat planes that came to a point in the middle like a chisel with glowing orange runes running across where eye slots would have been. While the clearly magical equipment was impressive, I was also different. My hair had gone from brown to red, much brighter than Tamra’s, and my eyes were an identical scarlet. I had grown at least half a foot in height and my skin had a soft glow to it.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

My red-haired reflection suddenly spun on his heel, jamming that fascinating helm onto his head and drawing his sword. I had the strangest sense of falling, and then I was seeing the world through his eyes. I was still standing by the Scrying Pool, boots bumped up against the edge, but I felt drawn into the reflection I saw almost as if I really were that incredible Warrior. From within the helm I could see a battlefield all around me, the orange runes across the eyeslit giving me a perfect, if off-colored, view of slain demons and fallen comrades. A flicker of runic characters darted across my vision, resolving into the orange outline of a person creeping toward me off to the left, dagger in hand. No actual person was visible within that outline, but the runes flashed brighter and brighter as the figure crept closer. Warrior-me made a slow, nonchalant quarter turn away, putting the slinking oddity in his periphery, and I found my heart beating wildly. Do I not see it? What’s happening? The runic outline was almost within arm’s reach.

Then my vision self’s hand tightened on the sword hilt and brought the blade sweeping out in a dazzling arc faster that I would have thought possible. The blade shone gold and left crackling streamers of light arcing in its wake. It cleaved the outline with a jarring thump, and suddenly a headless body shimmered into view dressed all in black, pumping blood from its neck stump as it toppled to the ground. An Assassin had been trying to sneak up and kill me, and now his head was rocking back and forth between my feet. My hand reached down, grabbed the head by its midnight hair, and held the gory trophy to the sky. Victory!

The vision faded, leaving me looking at the same static picture of my Warrior self in the Scrying Pool. My fists clenched and my heart swelled. This is what I could be. It was me at Devout rank, maybe even Deacon.

“You look good!” Tamra said, and I turned to see her staring down at my reflection. I hadn’t realized that I could see the future of others, and wasted no time dropping my eyes to the section of pool in front of her. It was an image like mine: Tamra in full plate, hair and eyes bloody red, both her hands resting on a pommel of a huge sword that came up to her chest. But then the pool rippled, and a new form appeared: Tamra with green hair, crouched beside a huge spotted cat, a bow sticking up from behind her back.

“You get to choose,” I said to her, impressed.

She had moved her hands to her hips and was frowning down. “I can’t tell which I want more though. The cat or that sword.”

Over to my left, Maphen’s reflection was at a sharp angle due to the distance between us. I couldn’t see exactly what it was, but I could tell that it kept changing. Unless I missed my guess, he had at least three of the seven paths to choose from. Maybe four.

Looking back down at my own steady reflection, I didn’t feel jealous about the options Maphen or Tamra were being presented. Unlike my siblings who had spoken with each other and our teachers in the Crim at length about which sacred Order they should pursue, I had always planned to follow the advice of those older and wiser than me. All paths could climb the Tower, and in the end, that was all that mattered to me.

“We’ll meet soon,” I said to my fiery, bulky reflection before turning back to Tamra. A put a hand on her shoulder. “You will do well on either path, sister.”

She cocked a grin at me. “‘Course I will.”

I leaned past her to see Aldric who was on her other side. His reflection was like mine, a steady warrior. “And you I’ll see soon, yes?”

He nodded distractedly, his focus on Tamra’s two choices, which rippled from one to the other every few seconds.

I left them to talk, as I knew they’d want to. Despite what Tamra had said, I was fairly certain that she would end up on the same path as Aldric. Out of the three of us, they were the closest, and even more, Tamra had never met a sword she didn’t like--a joke that had earned Aldric more than one bloody nose over the years.

Talk was growing louder among the twenty-one of us that circled the pool, but I got close enough to Maphen that I didn’t feel the need to raise my voice.

“No matter which you choose, do not forget the sparring session you owe me.”

“Hmm?” Maphen said, seeming to struggle to pull his eyes away from the future selves that floated before him. “Ah, Sett. Yes, never fear that. Even if we end up on opposite ends of the Tower I’ll come find you for a trouncing. What will it be for you then?”

“Warrior,” I answered simply.

Maphen chuckled, the good cheer of his I was familiar with returning. “Of course you are. Steady and straightforward as they come.”

I shrugged. “In my experience, the path to becoming more than you were is rarely straight, but,”--I lifted my hands and cracked my knuckles--“I am grateful that I will get to continue forward using the tools I am most familiar with.”

He grinned but that stretched his lips too far, and he cursed, bringing a hand up to his face. “They healed everything else, even your foolish friends. You’d think they could do the same for my mouth.”

“Maybe they wished you to keep it in mind while you made your decision,” I ventured. I didn’t tilt my head to look at his choices for myself, and I couldn’t rightly say why. Perhaps I wanted to hold onto the hope that a Warrior was among them, so that we might continue our training together more frequently. We’d been told in the Crim that we’d start a new set of classes in the Tower, but exactly what they were or how often we were to interact with the other sacred Orders was unclear.

I looked out into the darkness, wondering what was next, and was surprised to see that off to the left there was a path through the darkness leading to a huge, armored figure. It was easily seven feet tall, in head to toe black armor covered in lightly glowing red runes. A sword even bigger than the one Tamra had held floated in the air behind the warrior and two long dark shields hovered on either side of them.

“An Elder,” I whispered in reverence.

“I see nothing,” Maphen said in confusion beside me. I checked, and he was looking the same direction I had been.

“...perhaps they only appear once you know which path you wish to follow.” I looked back and the Warrior was still there, waiting. Waiting for me. “Good luck, my friend,” I said, not even looking back, my feet taking me toward the Elder. I couldn’t keep one such as that waiting for me, not once it was obvious that I had seen them.

As I walked through the tunnel of inky blackness toward the huge figure, the sounds of those behind me faded, either due to some magic of the surroundings or how arresting the Elder’s presence was. Nearing them, I felt my heart race faster, which I thought was my excitement, but then my ears caught the ring of metal on metal, and the taste of blood was on my tongue. Even more wondrous, only a few meters away now, I saw that behind the sweeping curves of the sides of their dark helmet, there was the impression of a tall mountain. It wasn’t as clear as the future reflections we’d seen in the milky pool, but it was there, a hazy peak stretching upward, with thunderclouds and lightning stabbing down. And at the pinnacle a figure stood, screaming in defiance against trials both above and below.

My eyes watered to see such a holy sight and I dropped to my knees before them. This was all part of the Warrior’s aura and proved that they were indeed of Elder rank, only a step below the revered Prophet, who was the sole holder of Apostle rank as well as being master of the Tower.

“You have called, and I have answered,” I said to the stone floor beneath the Elder’s metal feet.

“Sett,” a strong voice said from within the armor, and the sense of battle intensified around me. With my heart pounding against my chest, I couldn’t bear to stay prone, so I sat back, looking up at the huge figure above me. The runes across its faceplate shone brighter than the others, as if they were seeing me. “The Everwar is here and will not wait. Do you wish to face it as a Warrior?”

In that moment there was no other choice to be made. Misfell waited beyond the Tower, a net to catch the weak… but that would never be my path.

“Yes, Elder.”

The Warrior turned, the shield floating beside them mirroring its movement, revealing a path behind them that led to a far off curtain of hanging blades, if my eyes were not mistaken.

“Then proceed to our Hall, Neophyte,” they intoned, “and meet your fellows.”

A war cry reverberated in the air that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, and I bounded to my feet.

“As you say, Elder,” I said and sprinted past their hulking form, the sounds of their aura buoying me onward.