Jane stared around the room.

Twenty Janes blinked back at her with varying degrees of interest.

Some of the Janes looked cheerful. One looked bored. Two others, toward the back of the room, wore expressions of immense dislike.

Jane could not explain how she knew, but she knew—as though the Pool of Dreams had planted the information in her head—that one of these figures was the real Jane, and her task was to choose the right one.

She wiped the residual tears from her cheeks and sucked in a fortifying breath. It was okay. She could do this. She had survived the barrage of visions from the Pool of Truths. She was almost there, almost done. How hard could it be, picking out the proper copy of herself from a roomful of Janes?

She strode to the first desk, where Jane #1 met her eyes. She was cheery and smug, like she'd just scored a hundred on a stats exam. The expression was eerily familiar—she had seen it recently enough in some of her visions—and for a moment Jane paused, wondering if she had already found the right answer. The copy caught Jane's eye and flashed her a smirk. Jane shook her head and kept walking.

Jane #2 looked unfamiliar. She wore a coy, almost seductive expression, and she looked down shyly as Jane approached. Jane, slightly horrified, stepped closer and peered at the copy's lips. Was that makeup? Jane wanted to definitively cross this Jane off her list, except...

Jane turned to Jane #3. This copy met Jane's eyes straight on. Her mouth slanted upward, in a cruel imitation of a smile. It was like looking at Nikolay in one of his darker moods.

Jane shuddered and kept walking.

On it went, one after another. Frustrated Jane, angry Jane, tearful Jane, guilty Jane...

Jane paused longest before the eleventh version of herself. This was the only version that gave a genuine smile as Jane approached. She looked confident and put together, without being overly smug.

Competent. That was the word she was looking for. Competent, wise, and trustworthy—all the things that she desperately wanted to be.

Jane reached a hand toward the copy. She wanted so badly to pick this Jane.

But she knew it was the wrong choice.

She kept going.

Silly Jane, bored Jane, nervous Jane, fashionable Jane, hateful Jane, hopeful Jane...

Jane turned to the figure in the last desk. This version of herself shrugged and sighed, looking almost as lost as Jane felt.

Jane returned to the front of the classroom and began going down the line of Janes again. A faint hum of panic coursed through her veins. She had temporarily forgotten about her goal while the Pool of Dreams showed her those visions, but she couldn't ignore it now. Every minute she wasted here was a minute she could be helping fix the Rune protecting Dalnushka. Her friends above ground might be dying while she fumbled over the choice of which Jane to pick.

The problem was, there was no obvious choice. None of the other Janes seemed right somehow...

Her eyes landed again on Jane #3, who winked at her and mouthed, 'You know it's me.'

No, she thought. No, thank you!

She found her eyes drawn to self-absorbed Jane again. That was the version of herself that she'd seen most in the visions that the Pool had shown her. Behind self-absorbed Jane, nervous Jane caught her eye, biting her thumb with her teeth. Jane swallowed. If she was anyone right now, she was nervous Jane...

A lightbulb went on in her head.

Jane spun in place, staring at the other Janes. They stared back at her, with hope and disgust, fear and hatred.

"This isn't a fair test," said Jane.

Twenty Janes blinked up at her.

"You're all me," said Jane. "I can't choose only one of you, because you're all—"

The classroom dissolved into blackness.

~*~

Symbols burned bright in the darkness.

The first symbol she saw was a massive rune, the same locking rune that was supposed to protect Dalnushka's maze. Unlike the maze, however, this rune was unbroken.

After the locking rune came the protective spell on Dalnushka: a series of runes, the same ones that had been scuffed out on the obelisk. They danced before her eyes like flames, burning themselves into her retinas.

The information you seek, said the Pool of Dreams, and Jane thought, for a moment, that it sounded almost approving.

"Thank you," Jane whispered. She felt around in her pockets, unable to resist the urge to scrabble for a pencil and paper. Unlike Phillip, she did not have an eidetic memory, as she had just been reminded.

But the Pool seemed to have planned for that. You will not forget, it said, amusement in its tone.

Jane realized it was true. She had only stared at the runes for a few seconds, but she could recall them line for line, as though she had studied them for days.

"Thanks," she said again.

"One more thing."

It was not the Pool that spoke now, but a different voice entirely—a low, deep voice, a voice that made the air around Jane seem to shiver and bend. On her palm, the mark of Velos glimmered.

"You again!" Jane tensed, glaring down at the mark. "What do you want?"

The voice chuckled over her, low and dark. "Merely to give you a bonus vision, while you are in the mood for receiving visions, hmm?"

"I've had enough visions to last me a lifetime."

"One more can't hurt. And besides... this one will be fun!"

Before Jane could protest, she was plunged into the ether.

~*~

She was in a golden temple, high up on a cliffside. Seated around a table, in various degrees of repose, were the three gods: Divna, Sidor, and Avdotya. Avdotya was reading a book, while Sidor toyed with what looked like a giant chess board. He looked bored out of his mind.

Jane's eyes found Divna, the only one of them in deep concentration. She appeared to pouring magic into the table, which—Jane realized belatedly—bore vague resemblance to the surface of the Pool of Dreams. It rippled and flickered and shifted, images flickering over its surface. Gradually, a single image coalesced: a picture of a face.

Jane felt a jolt of unease when she realized it was hers.

"Jane Constance Huang will be an excellent choice," said Divna. "She's immature and coddled for her age, she has very few friends, and she cares only about schoolwork. Plenty of room to grow and develop. Not to mention, her brother disappeared when she was young and is now trapped in Kanach. Throw in that angsty sorcerer boy, and the possibilities for interesting godstests are endless."

"Sure..." Avdotya looked supremely unconvinced. "But I wanted another Phillip. You two always choose women when you pick."

"Well, you always choose your perfect 'cute' boys with too few imperfections. Do you know how hard it is for me to design tests that drive them toward personal growth? Not to mention, the suspense factor goes down massively when your starting material is a Mary Sue."

"I really don't care one way or the other," Sidor grumbled. "Can we please end this silly conversation? I have much better things to be doing than listening to two old biddies quarrel."

Avdotya shot him a cruel smile. "Somebody's bitter," she said. "I take it this Jane girl's not your type?" She studied her nails. "Why don't you just control her, like you're such an expert in doing, and make her write Eloise alive again in the Book of Truths?"

"And so I would," Sidor hissed, his face snakelike, "if dear Divna hadn't made it explicitly against the Rules."

"Quiet, both of you," Divna snapped. "There's a very good reason I made it against the Rules for a god to control an avtorka. You did quite enough damage to Eloise even with that Rule in place. My decision is made, it's my turn to choose a new avtorka, and I'm happy with my choice." She pushed back her chair. "You'll both thank me in the end. This spectacle will be the best we've seen in years."

The scene faded, but the afterimage of the golden temple remained—and with it, a cold, furious emotion, which seemed to settle in Jane's gut. Spectacle, Jane thought. People have died, and all you can think about is the potential for spectacle?

"You're welcome," said the deep voice with a chuckle.

~*~

There was rock beneath her feet again. Cold water splashed around her ankles.

She stood once more at the edge of the Pool of Dreams.

The water of the Pool no longer showed visions. Its surface was fractured, chaotic. Ripples marred the water, disturbing the reflections in sharp waves. Still dazed from the aftermath of her visions, Jane was slow to track the ripples to their source, but when she finally understood where the ripples were coming from, the blood turned to ice in her veins.

A few meters away, further down along the shoreline, Nikolay thrashed in the water. Jane had never seen a drowning man before—a least, outside of TV shows—but the image looked exactly like the videos she'd had to watch for her first aid class.

What had Nikolay said earlier? 'Should the seeker fail the tests, the Pool of Dreams will drown them'?

Jane scrambled over the rocks. For a moment, panic seized her. Nikolay was too big for her to drag out of the water herself. If she waded after him, he would surely pull her under—

Magic.

Right.

Yes.

She cast a levitation spell, marveling at how easily the magic came to her. Her practice levitating corpses with Drazan had clearly paid off, judging by how effortlessly the spell pulled Nikolay from the water. His body arced across the Pool, casting off a spray of droplets before smacking roughly onto the rocky shoreline.

The moment Nikolay made landfall, he rolled over on the gravel and began to cough. He coughed and coughed, spewing what looked like half the contents of the lake from his lungs.

Jane sat down on a nearby rock. She was careful not to sit too close to Nikolay in case his coughing evolved into puking. Her clothes were already muddy from the stalactites and the Pool, and Jane didn't want to think about how much more disgusting they'd be if they were coated in a light sheen of vomit.

"I take it things didn't go as you were expecting?" she said primly.

The venom in Nikolay's glare was somewhat dampened when, a second later, he launched into another fit of coughing. Jane frowned. His face was deathly pale, and his body was shaking. She tried to remember what she had learned about drowning in her first aid class. Something about damaged lung parenchyma and delayed effects? But surely magic could be used to cure this sort of thing?

Against her better judgment, she leaned closer, running through the list of diagnostic spells Casimir had taught her.

"Don't—need your help." Nikolay pushed her hand away, breathing hard. "Just—give me a minute."

Jane's frown deepened. No sarcastic remarks or angry rebuttals? He must be truly ill. "Are you sure you don't want me to—"

"Yes."

She withdrew her hand, but continued to study him, pensive, as the ripples on the Pool of Dreams stilled.

"Judging by the fact that the pool almost drowned you," she said presently, "I'm guessing you didn't learn how to purify your Oath potion. What did you see in the Pool?"

He didn't reply, but the grimace that flickered across his brow told her he had heard the question. Although his eyes were closed, she sensed that he was still awake. A gleam of magic gathered at his chest, casting the surrounding rocks in a silvery glow.

Jane took the hint and fell silent, watching Nikolay work on what she assumed was some sort of healing spell. It seemed to be taking a lot of effort, judging by his stillness and the tension in his jawline. She wondered—remembering her experiences with Alexei in the temple—what his spell would look like if she could view it with Magesight. As it was, she saw only a faint silver radiance, settling into his chest.

Gradually, the silver light faded, and Nikolay's breathing slowed. At last, just when Jane was beginning to wonder if she ought to leave him and finish her godstest alone, he opened his eyes.

"Did you heal your lungs?" she asked curiously.

"For the most part." He sat up with a wince, took what appeared to be an experimental breath of air, and released it slowly. The fact that he didn't erupt into another fit of coughing seemed a good sign.

"I have the key to fixing the locking rune and the runes on the obelisk," said Jane.

He nodded, but his gaze remained distant. It was almost as if he hadn't heard what she'd said.

Jane's frown deepened. Unbidden, the words spoken to her by the Pool of Dreams danced through her head.

Who you are... Where you come from... Your cracks, your flaws, your breaking points...

Had the Pool actually succeeded in breaking Nikolay? What kind of truths had he seen—what sorts of visions could have been so awful, so heinously unbearable, that he hadn't even been able to suffer through watching them?

Her eyes narrowed. Regardless of what had happened to Nikolay in the Pool, they couldn't stay here. She had a godstest to finish, and she was damned if she was going to let Nikolay—of all people—stop her from going home. Besides, given what she knew of him, he'd probably brought every one of those horrid visions down upon himself. He probably deserved whatever the Pool had thrown at him.

"Right then." She cleared her throat. "I'm going to fix the spells protecting Dalnushka with the information that the Pool of Dreams gave me. Kir and the others are still fighting, and I don't want to delay any further. Do you feel well enough to come, or do you want to stay here and I'll come back to join you when I'm finished?"

That seemed to snap him out of his daze. His eyes landed on her face and then settled there, narrowing, until they were slits of annoyance.

"Right," he said. "I had forgotten that you dragged my brother into this whole confounded mess."

Jane heaved a frustrated sigh. "That wasn't exactly how it—"

He pushed himself to standing, far less gracefully than usual, and stalked toward the entrance to the cave. Resisting the urge to trip him as he passed her, Jane followed him.

She had wondered if he might slow them down, but she needn't have worried, for he set a brisk pace through the tunnel. Judging by the way his eyes scanned their surroundings, he seemed to be returning to his usual self. Jane was relieved by this. His usual self might be horrible, but it was also competent, which was valuable when you were trapped in a series of underground passages with bloodthirsty creatures bursting out at you at every corner.

It wasn't long before they reached the balcony overlooking the locking rune. Nikolay frowned down at it. He still didn't look quite back to normal, but the color was starting to return to his cheeks, and he was no longer dripping with water; he must have dried his clothes with magic as he walked.

"All right, then." He nodded down at the locking rune, with a businesslike curtness. "Do you have to do this yourself for it to count?"

"I think persuading you to help me would work just as well," Jane said.

After all, it doesn't matter as long as the gods are entertained, right?

The dark thought crossed her mind before she could stop it, and she felt a surge of irritation rise within her. Up until now, she'd been too busy worrying over Nikolay's health to think about the final vision she had seen. Jane dug her nails into her palms and grit her teeth. The anger was not just directed at the gods, but also at her dad. At herself.

She had to get home. She had to get off this stupid world with its stupid gods and stupid rules. She had to find her way back, to mend the burnt bridges with her mom and Sandra. She had to confront her dad and figure out what she wanted to do with her life. Staying in Mir was not an option.

Jane closed her eyes and found, to her relief, that the afterimage of the locking rune still blazed in her memory, where the Pool had put it. She broke off a tiny stalactite and used it to sketch the rune on the dark stone of the railing.

"This is the locking rune."

She hesitated—and then, deciding it couldn't hurt to have another person know the spell—a backup of your data during a dangerous mission was always a good thing, in her mind—she sketched the runes they would need to repair the obelisk. "Just in case," she said.

She turned her attention to the locking rune.

It was so much harder to levitate walls back into their proper positions than it was to levitate bodies. For one thing, they were heavier, and for another, they were far more unwieldy. Sweat beaded her brow, and her knees began to buckle. She could practically feel the weight of the rock she was lifting, as though it was physically dragging her down. She snuck a peek toward Nikolay out of the corner of her eye. He had already raised two of the broken walls and was starting to work on a third.

Show-off.

Gritting her teeth, she twisted the misshapen stone she was levitating until it looked at an angle to fit into a crumbled-up part of the wall. Then she realized that she had forgotten something important: mortar. Without it, the stone might temporarily balance upon the remains of the wall, but it wouldn't stay there long.

"Watching you try to do magic is almost painful," Nikolay drawled. "May I?"

"What?"

With a sigh, Nikolay adjusted the stones on the wall beneath the giant behemoth she was levitating. Magic flickered over the rocks, a spell Jane didn't recognize.

"Set it down," he said.

It stuck in place, as though trapped in resin.

"Mortar spell," he explained. He was eying her sidelong. "You know, it might be easier if you just loaned me your magic. I did use quite a bit for that healing spell."

Jane tensed. "Last time I gave you my magic, you framed me for treason," she said. "I learned that lesson, thanks."

"I've no need to frame you now; I'm already a wanted criminal." Nikolay shrugged. "Framing you again would be redundant, don't you think?"

Jane wished he didn't sound quite so reasonable. Stubbornly, she continued working on the wall she'd started, setting stone after stone in place.

"Come," Nikolay said, and Jane realized he'd finished the other walls. "We still need to go into the maze to fix the protection spell at its center."

"I'm still—"

Nikolay waved a hand and the rest of the wall Jane was struggling with settled into place. Without a backward glance, he descended the steps toward the center of Dalnushka's maze.

Jane was too relieved to feel embarrassed. It doesn't matter if my magical abilities suck, she thought. Once I'm home, magic will be irrelevant anyway.

They descended down the staircase, retracing the path they had followed to get to the Pool. They were only halfway to the obelisk when a scream made Jane freeze in her tracks.

"Arydnyk," said Nikolay curtly. "Keep walking."

A second, louder cry split the darkness.

"That didn't sound like the aridnyk." Jane's voice quavered. "That sounded like—"

"Run."