Three days ago, Eyfrae had sat down to watch a short competition.

Three days ago, the city had been torn apart by the arrival of the gods’ Messenger and the eruption of the Sevenfold Tower. Since then, Eyfrae had only left her seat for the most basic of necessities, and the little shaded pagoda where she sat had become the center of Caltern’s political gravity, Malvet and her guild underlings bringing her business to her there. She sat, hands folded under her pointed chin, watching with bloodshot eyes.

These were the rules of the tower as she understood them.

The first and most frustrating was that nobody could say what happened inside. Contract magic bound their tongues, leaving them to stagger out the glowing doorways without a word they could say for what they had experienced inside.

Secondly, only twenty people could enter each floor. Twenty statutes adorned each ring of the tower, and their eyes lit up as challengers filled into the room. When the bottom layer was full, the doors snapped shut - or rather, stone walls materialized with a ripple where the doors had been.

The one time someone had been caught halfway through- it had been bloody. Their other half had eventually been spat out with the next batch failed contestants.

Third, and this was entering the realm of conjecture, but the first challenge pitted contestants against one another. It was easy enough to figure out when half of the contestants were always ejected as failures and half always advanced.

The second floor was not so forgiving. Most people didn’t make it past to the third, and only eight of the statues above were lit up. By Eyfrae’s observation, it wasn’t as simple as a trial by combat. Too many of what she’d considered top contenders were thrown out without ceremony.

As she sat there, the doors flickered and the dwarf with the seven-stone cudgel was hurled out, landing in a sprawling heap bellowing with anger. She sighed. Seven on the top floor.

The man with the golem hand. A woman with a fishing pole for a weapon. A pair of mages Malvet identified as Trelm and Krestin, twins and specialists in astral magic. One of her own, Emery, an adventurer she knew more for his bullshit stories than his actual accomplishments. An unknown who’d slipped by in one of her few breaks, evading the useless idiots she’d had keeping track.

And a dwarven soldier Cathara Halfhand seemed very intent on apprehending the moment he came out. She wouldn’t say it directly, but her guards were spread out through the crowd around the tower, waiting. The old woman occupied what had been Suffi’s seat, watching intently.

The fact such an unexceptional candidate had made it to the third layer was worth watching; he had just been one of Krait Halfhand’s posse, but had somehow survived the second floor as Suffi’s useless brother and all his other guards were spat out one by one.

Eyfrae sighed. She couldn’t keep up this vigil forever. Constant exposure to Mana had freed her from the physical need to sleep, but the mental need remained, wearing her down. She saw psychotic things in the corners of her vision, and the crowd seemed full of familiar faces that vanished as soon as she turned to look.

The dwarf was stumbling to his feet, lifting what he clutched in his hand for all to see. A gourd-flask, a pale blue color no earthly plant had produced. Already the bidding was beginning, offers of gold, of trade for other treasures the tower had given up.

The mob had grown every day since the tower’s rise. The city was encroaching into the square, tents being thrown up to serve the milling masses of challengers awaiting their turn. You could walk through the pavillion and buy yourself a bowl of thick fish stew, a skewer of roast meat, a shining new sword stamped with the symbol of a dwarf artisan, and a lucky figurine of Sol’s wheel carved from something close enough to gold; there were even stalls that offered nothing more than bedrolls, a canopy to shade you while you slept, and a guard to beat away the pickpockets that swarmed through the square thicker than the flies.

It was the city in miniature: bustling, mercantile, persistently violent and full of thieves born from the same entrepreneurial spirit as the merchants.

Gods, she was starting to hate it.

Trivelin had no idea how he’d got this far. Luck, mostly, yes, but with a dash of inexplicable competence he’d found held in deep reserves within himself.

The first challenge had been easy. He had stepped into an empty room full of arched windows, and soon after another of the dwarf noble’s guards had stepped through the door opposite. The poor fellow was a little too slow to figure out the challenge of the room was each other; Trivelin had successfully talked him into believing the object was to reach the glowing orb that lit the room from above, and no sooner had the obliging old fool bent down to give him a boost than Trivelin had conked him on the head with the breadclub.

Good old breadclub. Trivelin gnawed idly on it, his stomach growling.

The second layer had been more intense. A gray plain where white tombs rose, providing white teeth to the hilled landscape. It had been far too large to be contained with the tower’s physical dimensions.

Spectres with glowing eyes had patrolled the misty moors, and Trivelin had discovered, by accident, that the goal was to not be seen. It aligned very well with his first instinct to cower and hide. It was only later, seeing people disappear in puffs of mist as soon as they were spotted, that he realized he’d stumbled onto the actual lesson of the challenge.

Crawling on hands and knees, he’d found his way to the the center of the area, a vast mausoleum that towered above the rest, golden light spilling through its door.

One step, and he was here-

Where he’d been stuck for three days.

It was an arena, with sand for a floor and empty stadium seats carved of marble rising in all directions. Trivelin sat slumped in one of them now, gnawing and gumming at the breadclub in the hopes his saliva would eventually moisten it into something edible. Most of the other seven sat in their own stupors, exhausted.

The easy way out was to die. God knows if it was a real death, or if they appeared unharmed outside the tower, but the blood and the gore and the screaming all looked real.

Suffice to say he was willing to sit here a while longer chewing stale bread before trying that method.

At the center of the arena stood a thing. It had the lower body of a great jungle cat, all lean muscle under black fur and powerful, clawed paws, a flicking tail. But where a head should be, the beast instead rose up into the torso of a man, built like an ancient statue with rippling musculature and bronzed skin. He wielded a trident in one hand and a net in the other, his face covered by a beaked helmet with numerous slit across the front.

He - it - was the deadliest thing Trivelin had seen in memory. The trident whirled and stabbed, deflected all blows before they so much as came close, and the net had a nasty way of catching people off-guard as they tried to retreat or recover from having their weapon knocked aside. Even when two or more people came at once, the tauroid thing simply changed tactics, galloping around the arena at vicious speeds taking opportunistic strikes, relying on superior agility to wear down its enemies.

Trivelin had seen the damn thing run up a wall once, taking its enemy off-guard and piercing the unlucky dwarf through the skull.

But the only way out was through. Beyond the stadium, there was only a pitch black void, the world lit by a miniature sun that hung over the gladiator’s head.

Only one of them had brought food. The caramel-skinned woman with the tiger-stripe tattoos and the fishing rod sat happily shoving fistfuls of dried berries into her mouth. Oooh, how everyone hated her. Worse than the opponent who stood blocking their way, they glared at her.

But soon they’d have to put their differences aside. There was only one way to beat this foe, and that was to come at the foe altogether. Everyone knew it. Nobody wanted to the be the first to say so, and assume a leadership role that would probably get them stabbed in the back.

And he had his own dilemna. He would need to assume a new face before he left, and right now, everyone left was distinctive in some key way he couldn't copy. A golem-arm. An artifact fishing pole. A twin brother. That left two candidates, both of whom he eyed warily.

"Mm'kay-" Trivelin was startled out of his thoughtful gnawing as the fisherwoman spoke, wiping her lips. "I'm outta food so it's time we get this done. Who wants to see what's past this big lug?"