"And this one doesn't involve any form of servitude...? What would you say is the risk level just from untestedness."

"Difficult to say. Most paths don't turn out to be too much trouble, but every so often you find an entrapment or oblivion risk. Early signs don't point to either of those being an issue here but we can't rule it out yet."

"So statistically speaking, it isn't very risky, but the risk that is there is reasonably high...does it look like it would be particularly useful, assuming it's exactly as advertised, which I'm aware nothing ever is?"

"Hmm, let me dig a little deeper into the notes... ah, there's the Weird Sex Stuff warning label... hmm. By my best guess, it will be useful, but not necessarily more useful than other options previously discussed. I might recommend that you save it for later, take a different path now, and hope that by the time you return it will have been better tested by more adventurous beings."

"That sounds valid." He takes a moment to explain to Cold River all the previous options offered. 

(I find myself intrigued by the concept of a 'Soul Graft', especially given how soul-focused our mask's powers are. I imagine we could explore interesting possibilities that way.)

"Can you tell us more about the Soul Graft option?"

"Of course!" Ruffle shuffle plop. "The Soul Graft Battle Royale pathway is administered by an organization of malevolent beings, primarily for their own entertainment, secondarily with the intent of encouraging participants to become more violent and ruthless. They're not affiliated with us directly, but we picked them up as a pathway endpoint because they fit our criteria. They're mostly popular among either people who don't mind being violent and ruthless, or people who expect to be able to exploit hidden advantages to beat them at their own game. I expect the two of you could make a very good showing. The titular Soul Graft is a melding of your soul with the essence of some kind of magical being—their selection is very broad—which gives you a progression of mostly combat-focused powers, starting with a very basic set and gaining more if you nourish it by defeating your opponents in the titular Battle. There is also a Grand Prize, one of a small selection of varyingly useful magic items. I confess I'm not sure what they'll think of the two of you. By the nature of the pathway, you cannot be forced to compete with one another, and also by the nature of the pathway they cannot disqualify you from competing, so you will be required to enter the contest jointly; but it's possible that by the whim of the administering entity you may be offered separate Soul Grafts. Or perhaps they'll offer the Soul Graft only to the soul directly linked to your shared body, or perhaps they will apply the same Graft to both souls."

"I assume we fall under 'people who expect to be able to exploit hidden advantages.' The phrase 'Battle Royale' is concerning; is there a serious risk--to us specifically--of being forced to hurt people?"

"It may become necessary to inflict harm in self-defense, if you are unable to defend yourselves another way. The rules of the contest do allow you to resolve your differences peacefully or nonviolently, if your opponent cooperates, but of course some opponents will not."

"Understood. I'm provisionally amenable." (You?)

(I am interested. It seems as though there is little more information to be had than what we have already been told, but I would still like to see it before coming to a decision.)

"She would like to see the file, if that's possible."

"In the most direct terms it is not. I can, however, answer further questions to the best of my knowledge if you have any."

(I have no specific questions, only the desire to consider all the available information before deciding to act.)

(Admirable.) "How detailed is the information with which such questions can be answered?"

"There is not much in the way of further direct detail available, but as an example, if you wanted to know what approximate proportion of the previous choosers taking this path have died there and how that criterion relates to whether they were the violent and ruthless sort or the exploitative kind, I could search out that information and find it very shortly." A pause, a ruffle of pages. "Four choosers in twenty survive, three of them exploitative, the last a mix of violent and other. Of the exploitative category specifically, only one in thirty dies. These numbers are very approximate but it is difficult to collect more precise ones."

"Do you have any insight into why someone would choose this path who wasn't exploitative? ...Aside from being very violent as a person, I suppose."

"It seems many of them asked for search parameters that left it as a top option."

"Of the survivors, have any returned here and reported on their satisfaction?"

"Most went on to become immortal and have not returned. I suppose you could view that as a good sign."

"Can you tell us anything more about the rules?"

"Some rules change between iterations, and our notes on the subject are incomplete and somewhat out of date, but there is one aspect of the system I can confidently expect you to encounter because it has remained stable for a very long time. Pursuant to their goal of incentivizing violent conflict, the organizers of the event mandate that each participant must select a specific Grand Prize out of a small number of possibilities, and at the end of the tournament, for each prize, if only one participant survives among those who selected it, that participant receives it. Selecting a prize is mandatory and there is no means of reliably confirming which prize one selected, so participants who are serious about the pursuit of their prize will generally try to kill all of the other participants, just to make sure."

"I see...of the species likely to participate, either as contestants or grafts, what are their psychological bell curves like, compared to both of our species?"

"I don't have good statistics on that. Many of the participants are likely to be human before their soul grafts are applied."