Pithy paused as she entered the building, robes dripping water on the floor as she took in the sight that greeted her. Much like the men’s clothes, the building itself was constructed in a style she was not familiar with, but while the size itself was impressive, the long hallway with its many doors branching paths did not remind her of the grandeur of a noble’s estate or the forbidding solemnity of a religious temple. This was a place for work.

Her eyes roamed for a moment longer before they fell to the path before her. Tracks of dirt and mud in strange and varied shapes and sizes marked the way forward, evidence of those who had been brought before her. Storms must have heralded their arrivals same as hers. What drew her gaze, however, was a trail of red mixed with the rest of the tracks.

The men leading her had seen it too.

The one named Michael wore a concerned expression as he looked down at the blood. “Think the others ran into trouble?”

The older man shrugged. “It would not be surprising. The Crucible’s participants were not chosen for their restraint. Much the opposite, in certain cases.”

“Wouldn’t that make her…” Michael’s words trailed off as he caught the half-lidded look Pithy had leveled his way.

“Go on. Do complete that thought,” she said dryly.

The young man hesitated.

Dr. Howell shook his head, as though he did not much care for the banter. “It wouldn’t be wrong to say we were fortunate.”

Pithy turned to look at the other man and, released from the woman’s expectant glare, Michael coughed into his wrist. “Let’s keep going,” he suggested once he had composed himself. “We’ll know more once we meet the rest.”

Seeing no reason to object, Pithy followed as the men delved deeper into the building. As she went, her eyes trailed the multitude of doors they passed. Occasionally an open door would reveal a desk, chairs, and stacks of documents that reminded her of the office of an advocate she had done business with years before. She remembered how the innkeeper had told her that the men struck him as scholars, and had little trouble picturing people working at those desks, with students roaming the hallways, large books and stacks of paper in their arms.

What did not fit with that image were the rope barriers placed before doors and branching hallways. Pithy felt fairly confident that even without the muddied trail and the men leading her she would have been perfectly able to reach the place she was expected to. She found some slight amusement in the fact, as it seemed to hint at the nature of the mind that had set up this occasion.

[i]The stage is set, the cast is ready, and the main show is about to begin. All that is left is for you to go to your respective places, but do take care not to wander into the backstage.[/i]

“Where is this place?” she found herself asking.

“We’re in the Inquisitional College,” Michael supplied from the lead position.

Unhelpfully. She had already guessed as much. “I meant geographically. This is the first time I hear of this College, and I don’t recognize the city outside.”

[i]It’s not like the human cities I have come across. It’s much too large, and has no walls.[/i] In truth, she had never seen anything quite like it. She considered saying as much, but quickly decided there would be no point in making her ignorance evident.

It was Dr. Howell that offered her an explanation. “We do not have an answer that would mean much to you, Lady. We are no longer in your world, after all.”

Pithy found herself ready to raise her voice in protest, but she clamped down on the words. Talk of other worlds parallel to her own were not unheard of in her where. The domains of the gods, those tied closely to the existence of the world she lived in were generally acknowledged to be tightly woven but separate realms, and magic users that relied on summoning magic told of countless other worlds from which their demons hailed.

Academically, [i]demon[/i] had long become a word used to describe unidentified beasts and beings from other realms.

She realized that what she found difficult to believe was not the idea that they had made a jump to a different world, but that it had been done so seamlessly. She would have expected an extreme confluence of power to be required in order to open a path between two disconnected worlds, but all they had done was walk with a nondescript lantern—

[i]Except that was not entirely the case, was it?[/i] There had been a storm raging around them as they traveled, and if she were to guess by the muddied trail leading forward, the circumstances of her drawing had not been unique. 

The sensible part of her warned against taking the men at their word, but she could not deny that she [i]wanted[/i] to believe the man with the trimmed beard and sunken eyes. She had already followed them to this strange place. If a device that could enable such travel existed in this place, perhaps this College had truly found something that could aid her. She wondered if they would allow her to examine the lantern were she to ask.

Belatedly, she became aware of Howell’s steely eyes fixed on her profile. Pithy met his gaze, prompting him to speak his mind.

“Something tells me you do not find this entirely unlikely,” he ventured.

Pithy shrugged, trying to hide the uneasiness she felt at the man’s ability to guess at her thoughts. “Perhaps I’ve become jaded,” she admitted. 

“Here we are,” Michael announced. Before them stood a pair of white, shuttered swing doors that vividly reminded Pithy of the entrance to a bar she had visited in a frontier town. The fact that it did not fit with the surroundings made her think it was a new addition, and a temporary one at that. “Once you are inside, look for an unoccupied podium,” he told her. “We’ll follow behind you.”

Pithy brought her hands to the sides of her head, making sure her cowl was still in place, then brought her right hand to her hip, resting it on her rapier’s handle in a gesture that stilled her nerves. Thus ready, she swung the door open and walked into the large atrium.

Heads turned to study her as she walked towards an unoccupied podium, and she took the time to study the competition in return. She counted thirty-two podiums in all, some filled, some still vacant. Though many of the entrants exhibited the humanoid features she had become familiar with, some with small additions or differences, others could only be described as monsters.

[i]Demons,[/i] she found herself brought back to an earlier thought. [i]And if I were to remove my cowl to show my ears and part my hair so they could see all of my face, would some not think the same of me?[/i]

What Pithy took to be the rest of the participants steadily began to fill the room, each going through the ritual of marching to their own podium under the weight of the stares of a murder of killers, made heavier by the last joining in their number to glare at the next. 

As she watched the procession to its end, it occurred to Pithy that it was impressive that the College’s staff had been able to fill every podium. Not a single participant had refused the invitation. Though as her gaze found the one lone attendee standing behind an amorphous, smiling monster, she found herself agreeing with Dr. Howell’s assessment. They had been fortunate indeed.

Finally, from a walkway above the podiums, an old woman addressed the congregation. Pithy listened with interest that quickly turned into dismay as she realized that the woman planned to gloss over the details of their predicament in order to focus on the organization of the tournament itself.

[i]And why not? Every fool here—myself included—has already agreed to be used. And if this machine cannot grant wishes, or the College intends to use the winner’s one wish for themselves? Well then, that’s a bridge to cross later.[/i] 

She found herself wishing that whatever this machine was, it continued to grant wishes once the ritual was performed. Of course, she was certain such convenient things would not exist in any reality, for any reality in which such a thing existed would have destroyed itself in the blink of an eye.
 
Pithy directed her frustration forward, to the heart-shaped object resting on the podium. 

Phylactery.

Now this was a word she knew, and not one she liked. She held a hand over it, hesitating. Focusing on the small figurine, she could feel the weight of an enchantment nestled within, but the structure of the spell was unlike any she had observed before. She couldn’t make heads or tails of it. 

In a way, this encouraged her. It lent credence to the idea that she had been transported to a different world with miraculous possibilities. However, it also made her realize that donning the accessory would be something she could not take back. Even were she to find something capable of helping her in the wreckage of the abandoned city, she would need to play her part to its conclusion.

[i]Then again, if I had options in the first place I would not be standing here.[/i]

It was with this in mind that the woman grasped the chain and slipped it over her head, taking a moment to smooth out the disturbed hair and cowl. The pendant she placed under her clothes, feeling the imitation rest close to her actual heart.