Gregory had been walking for most of the day by the time he saw buildings in the distance. Between clusters of trees and the rolling terrain he hadn’t been able to see far so the sight left him feeling excited. Nearly running he reached the small village in under an hour, finding a small cluster of brick and wood structures clustered within a palisade wall. The largest structure was right by the gate, and it was pretty clearly a church, with a tall steeple that towered over the rest of the village.

He was so enthralled by the sight that he almost missed when a pair of men in worn leathers stopped him from entering the village.

“Are you an ascender?” one of them asked in a rough voice after looking Gregory over.

“I think so,” he replied slowly, his throat dry after traveling for hours.

“Follow me, I’ll take you to the church,” the man said before glancing over at the other man, “can you handle the gate for a bit?”

“So long as you don’t stop to flirt with the sister,” the other man said dryly, causing the first to roll his eyes and motion Gregory to follow.

“You two guards?” Gergory asked as he followed.

“Eyup,” he nodded, “gotta watch out for beasts and ascenders, the World Wood is dangerous.”

“That the name of the forest?”

“Eyup.”

Clearly the man didn’t want to talk, or was just bad at it. Either way Gregory chose to follow in silence, looking around at the small town with an eager curiosity. Most of the buildings had an old world feel to them, with stone base that transitioned to wood near the top of the first story. Many of the structures were two stories tall, likely to make the most of the limited space within the walls. The roads had transitioned from dirt to cobble at some point before entering the town, with well worn tracks clearly visible in the smooth stones where many a cart had passed. While the main road was more than wide enough for a horse drawn cart the side streets were as narrow as they could be while still separating different buildings.

Only the church, just off the main road and the first structure on the right after entering the small town, gave the impression of having enough space. A modest garden filling the area to either side of the cobbled path leading to the main church. Rather than being decorative the garden was filled with rather plain looking plants in clearly marked plots, meaning it was a herb garden. Did the church also offer healing services, Gergory wondered.

“Thorn!” a feminine voice called from one side, revealing itself to be a young woman in a shapeless brown robe. Despite this her face was quite pretty, Gregory had to admit.

“Sister!” the guard called back, sounding far friendlier than he had earlier, “this guy showed up a few minutes ago, claims to be an ascender.”

“Let me see,” the sister said, wiping her hands off on her robe while hurrying over, nimbly avoiding the tightly packed herb beds. Gregory took the moment to glance again at the man who’d brought him here, and, while Gregory wasn’t interested in men, he could recognize that this Thorn’s face was relatively well built. The other guard had also looked pretty good, he noted. His thoughts were interrupted as the small Sister stopped in front of him and gave him an appraising look.

“He’s an ascender,” she said definitively, “only they dress like… this.”

“I thought his clothes were weird,” Thorn admitted, making Gregory glance down at his jeans and t-shirt self-consciously.

“I’ll take him from here Thorn,” the sister smiled at the guard, revealing clean white teeth. The blushing guard quickly retreated as the sister turned back to Gregory, “you have a name Sir Ascender?”

“Gregory,” he replied nervously.

“Come with me, Sir Gregory,” she said, motioning him towards the front doors of the church, “I’ll introduce you to the Head Priest, anything else I can get for you?”

“A drink?” Gregory asked slowly, he hadn’t had anything to drink since he turned away from the river.

“Oh! Of course!” she nodded, pushing open the doors to the large stone church and beckoning him in. The church was as expected, for a small European style town, with rows of pews facing an altar of some sort. The only difference from typical churches was the lack of crosses or anything he might recognize as religious iconography.

“Father!” the young woman called out, nearly bounding down the aisle between the pews. In response to her calls an older man, looking to be in his mid-thirties if Gregory was any judge, stepped out from a door to the sides of the altar.

“Sister Penny, what is…” the priest started only to trail off as he saw Gregory, “an Ascender?”

“Yup!” she said excitedly, “just walked into town!”

“Excellent,” the priest nodded, approaching Gregory and holding out a hand, “I’m Father Araman.”

“Gregory,” he replied, accepting the offered and, and trying to hide his surprise at how strong the grip was.

“I’ll get drinks!” the sister said, bouncing off into another door.

“You’ll have to forgive her,” Araman said with a slight smile, “she’s always been taken with the stories of Ascenders.”

“I can tell,” nodded Gregory.

“In any case, I don’t know how it worked in the last world, but here the Churches are responsible for teaching newly arrived Ascenders,” the father explained as he led Gregory into another room with a small table and a few chairs, motioning for them to sit, “do you know what an ascender is?”

“Nope,” Gregory shook his head, “I didn’t even know they existed till I arrived… here.”

“That’s alright, not uncommon for new Ascenders. Do you remember how you ascended here?”

“Not really,” Gregory said, scratching his head, “some men came and said I was selected for a trial… they asked me a bunch of questions and… then it’s a blur.”

“Interesting,” Araman said, pausing when the sister bounced into the room, somehow managing to not drop the teapot or porcelain cups, which she quickly placed in front of the two men and filled. She then dropped into a third seat and began watching them intently, Araman gave her a long hard look, before sighing and shaking his head.

“In theory you should have been informed about Vituss by the fae,” Araman continued, “but they are notoriously fickle beings, so I can’t imagine you got much out of them.”

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“She wasn’t… helpful,” Gregory nodded, causing Araman to chuckle.

“Unfortunately my knowledge of Vituss is more limited than the messengers of the gods, but I’ll tell you want I can. The basic explanation is that Vituss is the fuel of the soul, just as you would feed wood to a fire, a soul must burn Vituss in order to awaken. It’s not required for life, but is required for souls to form.”

“So I didn’t have a soul in my last world?” Gregory asked with a bit of alarm.

“You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t,” Araman smiled, “but depending on the world you came from and how much Vituss there was it’s possible many of that world don’t have souls. Uhhh,” he paused to think, “in your world were there people who’s abilities seemed to go beyond all others? Great leaders of men, scientists or sages of seemingly impossible intelligence, that kind of thing?”

“Ya.”

“They likely had the most powerful souls of your world, while the average person may not have had one, hard to say as I don’t know your world.”

“Some people are just… better than others?” Gregory asked.

“Can you argue otherwise?” Araman countered, “no one man is good at everything, but some are clearly better at certain skills than others. Either from natural talent or through drive and ambition. Anyone can become great, but not everyone does. There’s nothing wrong with desiring a peaceful life, but it’s hard to argue it limits your ability to grow in certain directions. I will likely never become a bishop, as I lack the desire and ability for it, does that make me lesser than those who become bishops? Only insofar as I’m a lesser priest. Same is true here, souls are the result of one’s desire and ambition, so of course some would have stronger souls than others.”

“I didn’t have much ambition in my last world,” Gregory said softly, looking down into his mostly drained teacup.

“Clearly you had some, a burning flame within you ready to ignite or you wouldn’t have ascended,” Araman soothed with a friendly smile, “less important than how you formed your soul is what it can do. The short version is that your soul uses the energy generated by consuming Vituss to try and fulfill your desires. Not unlike your body will keep you alive using food you consume. Perhaps you’ve noticed how pretty Sister Penny is,” he said while gesturing to the now blushing sister, “or how healthy everyone you encountered seemed, even though our village is clearly a small poor town.”

“I did notice that,” Gregory nodded.

“That’s because of the greater Vituss in this world, compared to your last. While your soul will try to fulfill your desires, the soul is, well, a beast of base desires and instincts. It’s the very core of who you are,” Araman explained, “the fae may have mentioned something about your soul, mind and actions aligning to earn facets, right?”

“I think so.”

“Well, that’s what I mean. Your soul is the core of who you are, a source of energy it generates from burning Vituss. But in order to influence the world it is filtered through first your mind, where you hold beliefs about who you are and what you want, and then your actions, where you interact with the world around you. The more in alignment these three things are the more effective the soul is.

“For example, everyone wants to be healthy, generally people associate beauty with health, and they will work to look better. Even without a facet to that effect the soul still acts, improving our appearance so long as we try to become healthy. But that doesn’t mean the soul is all powerful,” Araman warned, “it can be deceived and mislead as easily as your mind can. Everyone wants to be happy, correct? Some people believe money is happiness, which can be true, but if their soul truly desires a more simple happiness while they believe they desire money, even if their actions are perfectly in alignment with their desire to gain money, their souls will have a hard time helping out.”

“So… what are you saying?” Gregory asked, “this sounds more like general life advice than something to do with me being an Ascender.”

“Ha! You’re not wrong,” Araman chuckled, “while everyone can benefit from the power of their soul, ascenders are different in that they have surpassed the limits of their last world. As souls grow stronger their ability to influence the world becomes more significant, but they also require more Vituss to survive. What would happen if someone who requires a high level of Vituss went to a world with very little of it do you think?”

“Well,” Gregory thought, “you keep referring to it as if the soul was a flame, burning the Vituss around it, so by that metaphor their soul would consume the world to fuel itself… right?”

“Pretty much, I don’t know a lot about it, but I was told when I was in training to be a priest that too strong of a soul can destroy a world not able to sustain it. Thankfully there is a natural mechanism to avoid this.”

“Ascension!” Gregory said.

“Exactly,” Araman smiled, “when a soul becomes too strong for a world it will attempt to ascend to the next one. Again, the details of this are beyond me, and, from what I’ve been told there are many ways to ascend, but the most common is through pure strength of spirit.”

“So I have to get stronger?”

“If you want,” the priest shrugged, “I’m just here to instruct you as much as I can while noting your appearance for the kingdom. Having already overcome one world it should be easier for you to rapidly gain strength in this one, but every Ascender is different. If you remain true to yourself, you will be naturally stronger than most others in this world, by a greater degree than those heroic men and women were in your last. But you can choose to settle down and live a simple life or to continue to push yourself and eventually attempt to ascend to the next world.”

“What’s the next world like?”

“I don’t know, it’s rare for people to descend the worlds.”

“Huh,” Gregory paused to think, he had felt stronger, healthier, here than in his last world, but he figured it was because of his new body as the fae seemed to indicate. But what if it was due to his soul, his facets?

“What about facets? How do they work?” he asked.

“A good question, facets are unique aspects of yourself, as an ascender you have a ‘nature’ which helps you feel these facets. Until someone ascends for the first time they largely have to guess as to what their soul is doing. Having a nature is one of the reasons, I imagine, that ascenders can grow quickly, as they can feel if something works or not.”

“So you don’t have a nature?”

“No,” the priest smiled, “natives to this world don’t.”

“But you still have strong souls?”

“Compared to your last world, yes.”

“Then…” Gregory paused, “why is this world so… far behind the one I came from? Technologically I mean.”

“While Vituss is great for strengthening souls, too much of a good thing is poison,” Araman said sadly, “birth rates in our world are significantly lower than in yours, because the abundance of Vituss makes it hard for new souls to form. They aren’t ready for this kind of power and fail to even form. Honestly, if it wasn’t for a steady stream of ascenders we probably couldn’t even survive in this world. I imagine, though I don’t know, that the higher the world you reach the more apparent this will be.”

“That’s… I’m sorry.”

“It is what it is,” Araman shrugged, “not like we can’t have children, it’s just harder than in your world. Without enough people our technological advancement is slower, still we have some things, like porcelain,” he said, holding up a tea cup.

“What’s the point of ascending then?” Gregory asked after another moment’s thought.

“I don’t know,” admitted the priest, “every ascender is different, some simply want to become the strongest. Others simply want to find out who they truly are. I can only imagine what is at the top of the tower.”

“The tower?”

“What people call the series of world ascenders go through, though from what I’ve been told it’s more like a pile with far more worlds with much weaker Vituss and much fewer with higher densities.”

\*\*\*\*\*

Deep in the forest a group of men waited, a half dozen them all told as a last man emerged from the tree line. All but one of them wore loose fitting fatigues with heavy boots. At odds with their modern military clothing was an assortment of ancient weapons, spears, axes, bows and swords all present.

“This everyone?” the most recent man asked, watching as the other camo wearing men gathered.

“You were the last to go through sir,” a large man with a swarthy complexion replied in a deep voice, “we all make it?”

“Anderson and William burnt up,” the first man replied, then paused as he looked off to the side where a man in a lab coat seemed to be jumping about, doing squats and generally bouncing like an excited kid, “who’s that?”

“That’s the doc,” another man replied, this one with a slighter build.

“Seems that fairy wasn’t lying when it said we got new bodies.”

“He’s been happy ever since we got here.”

“Well,” the newest man said, clearly the one in charge, “anyone encounter anyone else?”

“You mean those Arblians we sent through first? Not that I know.”

“I saw a corpse from a distance,” one man revealed, a spear over his shoulder, “it looked half eaten so I decided not to get any closer.”

“Probably for the best, ran into a squirrel thing the size of old dog on the way here, hopefully some of the… scouts survived. If we encounter any, they should have some information,” the leader said, “well, if this is everyone, I guess we proceed on the mission, right?”