Varro didn’t hesitate. He pushed down his nerves and walked up to the tower's entrance.

Two massive double doors stretched before him, their surface covered in shifting waves and serpentine monsters.

The others quickly followed behind.

The man with the pipe chuckled. "You're braver than I am, little goblin. I don't think I could volunteer to go first."

Varro swallowed. He tried to say something, but the words wouldn't come.

He reached out and pushed on the doors.

They swung open on silent hinges.

Utter blackness stood on the other side.

"Well, go on then, goblin. You've got this."

Varro gave a weak chuckle.

His hands were clammy at his sides, and the salty air began to make him sick.

But waiting around wasn't going to make him feel better, and it wasn't getting him any closer to his goal.

With a deep breath, Varro stepped into the darkness.

~<>~<>~

The first thing that struck him was the smell.

Rot and saltwater wriggled their way into his nose, invading his senses like a living thing.

Without warning, the scent switched, Rot replaced with flowers, though the smell of the sea didn’t lessen.

He stepped forward, taking in his surroundings.

The chamber was massive, stretching hundreds of feet in every direction.

He took a cautious step forward. The floor was covered in elaborate tiles of blue and green and stretched twenty feet to each side.

After that, the floor gave way to dark, still water.

That stillness caught Varro’s eye. He didn’t know why or how, but he was struck with the feeling that these waters should be anything but still.

He felt it in his bone. This was like the moon refusing to show its face. Like the sun stalling in its trek across the sky.

It was wrong.

He looked up at the ceiling, which was shrouded in complete darkness.

Finally, Varro did the thing he’d been avoiding since stepping through the door.

He looked at the throne.

And it was a throne; despite its time-worn appearance, the grey stone chair could be nothing else.

Symbols lined its edges, shifting with murky light. One moment blue, the next white, then black.

Behind the throne, a massive pillar of water twisted and writhed, shapes and images flashing in its depths.

Varro swallowed and looked at the man who sat on the throne.

He was tall, very tall. He could tell that even with him sitting. Heavy chains encircled him, stretching over the stones, their links vanishing into the waters.

He wore rich blue pants of fine silk with an equally rich shirt of navy blue that was buttoned down the sides.

His face was shrouded in the darkness of his cloak.

And what a cloak it was.

It stretched over the throne in an impossible tapestry of shifting blues and greens and black, the fabric richer than any Varro had seen.

The air practically glowed around it. But as Varro’s gaze moved towards the bottom, the fabric began to fray and unravel. It l worsened until there were gaping holes at the end of the cloak.

Holes that didn’t show the throne through them. They showed absolutely nothing.

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Varro took a deep breath and bowed to the throne.

Malabor’s dark cowl shifted, and he raised a single finger, beckoning Varro closer.

No turning back. It had been too late for that the moment he stepped through these doors.

Varro walked forward, his small boots echoing on the tiles.

He forced himself to keep his breathing even, forced himself to work through his rising panic.

But every step closer to the god made it worse. A heavy pressure squeezed Varro from every angle, like the ocean depths were inches away, just waiting for an excuse to crush him.

And they were angry. Be could feel that, too, pressing against his thoughts like a hot poker.

He stopped six paces from the god and bowed again.

He didn’t know if that was necessary, but more politeness couldn’t hurt.

Malabor stared at him, saying nothing.

Varro certainly wasn’t going to say anything first, so he settled into the most uncomfortable silence of his life.

Malabor was in no rush to break it either, so the two of them stayed like that for what felt like hours but were likely only a few minutes.

Varro could feel something, a light touch at the edge of his awareness. It probed his mind, searching for something. What that was, he couldn’t say, but Varro didn’t like it.

His mind was his, no one else’s, not even a god's.

He tried to push against the feeler, and Malabor shifted. And so did the current behind him.

Varro eyed the water warily. The Oceans Path. Supposedly it stretched throughout the entire tower. The few brave fools who braved this tower regularly claimed that you could navigate the whole thing if you learned the Path's secrets.

Varro was hesitant to trust the word of those crazy enough to regularly enter this place.

The feeler retreated, and The Oceans Path rippled, and then a tendril of water shot from it straight to Malabor’s waiting hand.

It gathered there, swirling and mixing until it was a perfect sphere.

Blue essence began to gather in his palm so strongly that even as an ungifted, Varro could feel the magic in the god's grip.

The essence reached a tipping point and shot into the water.

It turned a blue so dark it was almost black.

Then it began to drift towards Varro.

It stopped in front of him, a swirling ball of power, of potential.

Varro stared at Malabor, then the orb.

He took it in his hands. He knew what he was supposed to do, but the thought made him queasy.

He hesitated, then brought the orb to his lips.

Steeling himself, Varro drank the water.

it burned. Cold and furious as it rushed down his throat.

It didn’t stop once it reached his gut, either. The cold spread, running through his veins, downing out his blood in a flood of power.

He screamed, looking up at the god in a panic.

The dark hood stared at him, and then the Oceans Path surged forward.

It crashed into Varro, sweeping him from his feet in a terrible current.

Cold and darkness overwhelmed him, mixing with the burning in his blood.

Visions forced their way into his mind.

A dark sea at night, a storm filled with screams, dark waters splashing against rocks.

The vision stilled, focusing in on the rocks.

The stone began to tremble along with the surf. A fissure split the rocks, racing along the water.

The earth and sea began to split, and a great eye stared into the sky.

It blinked, the dark pupil as large as an island. Then it focused on Varro.

~<>~<>~

Varro gasped awake, his heart pounding and his hands covered in sweat.

Images flashed through his mind—the great eye, the burning cold in his blood.

He took a steadying breath and forced himself to sit up.

The sounds of waves lapping against wood filled his ears, and as he looked around, three things stood out to him immediately.

He was in a dinky rowboat with nothing but water for hundreds of yards in all directions. He could just barely make out the tower's walls in the distance. Hell, the room was so tall he could see clouds overhead.

Second, the rowboat didn’t have any oars or any other means of propulsion.

And lastly, he wasn’t alone in the boat.

The eith xairie woman sat across from him, her expression neutral.

“Oh, hells. The tower is testing us, isn’t it?”

The woman met his eyes before slowly nodding.

“It would seem so, little goblin,” she said, her voice thick with a xairain accent.

“And the first test, it appears, is how we are supposed to get a boat with no oars over there.”

She pointed, and Varro looked.

It took him a moment since what she was pointing to was at the opposite end of the floor from them.

But he figured it out after a beat, and his stomach dropped.

There was a doorway, an utterly massive doorway. And they had no way to get to it.

Varro sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Rot and rubble!”

The eith woman nodded severely. “I do not know what that means. But I think I agree.”