As my soul rocketed through the endless void, my mind cleared of the divine alcohol and I took stock of the situation. Somehow… well, I said somehow, but it was pretty fucking obvious I’d just gotten drunk off my ass and agreed to be reincarnated for some reason. I looked inward, at my soul. My mental construct, a mnemonic technique for remembering spell formations, was relatively intact. A normal body and soul couldn’t hold a tenth of my capacity, which meant I wasn’t reincarnating into a newborn. Why? Why give me the body of an experienced mage? That’d make the challenge almost trivial.

The answer came, of course, in the final moments of my journey. As I entered into the world from a bird’s eye view, rapidly moving towards my new body, I could see everything that was happening. My body was asleep–no, dying in a ditch with a small serpent next to it. Loki. Off in the distance, I could see a mammoth compound of some kind surrounded by floating islands in the sky. The main compound consisted of several huge towers spiraling into the clouds, but that was about all I could tell before I closed in on my new body.

It was handsome, I’d give it back. No Apollo, but few were and I could work with what I had. Strong features, sandy blonde hair of moderate length, and pale blue eyes that caught the light. Even the teeth were pretty good, as expected of any decent caliber mage with a hint of vanity. As I prepared to enter the body, there was a piercing sensation in my soul as I integrated with the body. My senses connected to his, and I felt the venom coursing through his veins. My mind connected to his brain, and my thoughts slowed slightly to the pace of a mortal’s. As my sense of his mana connected, though, I felt that sharp pain. I had no access to his mana.

Normally, even an infant has some connection to mana. It was a necessity for them to start their cultivation base and create a core for the use of magic. There was no bank for mana without a core, and with no bank for mana there was no way to fuel spell formations. With no connection to magic, I had zero chance of creating a strong mana base. Not to mention, my body had already been reinforced with magic once through as the original owner of this body progressed through the ranks. What would happen if I did it again? It’d never been done before, and I was nervous about the results. There was no guarantee it would be good–I wouldn’t get twice as strong or twice as powerful or whatever the hell else sounded logical.

Oh well, there were other problems to deal with. The serpent, Loki’s animal, hissed beside me and prepared to bite me again. I shook away the fog that clouded my mind and reached out to grab it right behind the jaws. My body responded quickly, faster than my original probably would have at this stage, and I crushed the serpent’s head with one hand.

How had that serpent even killed this body in the first place? My estimation of the locked mana was that this body was probably a fourth or fifth circle mage. Pretty impressive by the standards of this world, but a far cry from godhood to be sure. The third circle was the first stage of body enhancement as the physical form reconstructed itself to conduct magic better.

Another human of the first circle, with no other methods of enhancement and that looked just like me, would probably only be about half as strong. Effectiveness of body enhancement varied from mage to mage based on a number of factors, but I’d clearly done a good job of it.

I sat up, another wave of nausea hitting me as my mind got used to the body. I gave it a second for the sensation to pass, then looked down at the area around me. I was wearing simple traveling clothes: a linen shirt and harem pants with a bandolier of items and a satchel on the ground next to me. First things first, though.

I brought the snake up closer to my face and inspected it. I placed my other hand over its head, careful to avoid the fangs, and twisted. With a gruesome schlurk, the head detached from the rest of the body and I cast it aside.

I grimaced, finding what I was looking for and pulling out the parchment that Loki had placed inside of the serpent. I unrolled it and read.

Myth! What’re the odds, but there’s an individual traveling that just so happened to be perfect for our experiment! Magnus Blackwood is an aspiring young instructor at the illustrious Avalon academy. He’s on his way to be the newest professor of the Practical Applications of Magic class, 2nd level. I suspect you’ll find some other context in his bag…

Anyways, good luck! I’m shocked you agreed to the stipulation that your mana be sealed away, but very pleased. It wouldn’t have been fair to make it too easy on you, after all. It’ll be a treat to see you help the next god with their ascension or be locked into mortality forever!

And don’t worry about your domain, of course. Asmodeus, Azazel, and I will take excellent care of your belongings while you’re gone.

Ta-Ta!

I swore and threw the parchment aside. That bastard. All bastards involved, myself included. I couldn’t believe I’d let myself get taken advantage of like that. I swore an oath then, that I’d get back to my domain and kick the divine shit out of all three of those jumped up thugs and burn their miserable little souls inside of their bodies.

I stood up, then, the headache abating as my body got used to my soul, and peered into the satchel. I knelt down and took everything out. Not for nothing, the satchel was enchanted to be bigger on the inside than the outside. I found plenty of traveling rations, some waterskins, and a variety of useful items.

Magnus Blackwood was a man that liked to be prepared, it seemed. His spellbook was interesting, of course. He knew many of the common spells, though less than I would have expected, and I made note of which pages seemed to be commonly used.

It’d be important if I was well-known at all to seem in line with what they expected. Given that the year hadn’t started yet, though, I likely had plenty of leeway with my personality and performance.

I pulled out one of the most useful magical items that a lost person could have. A Seeker’s Compass and a map that was fairly accurate. Engraved on the back of the compass was the name Avalon, its designated location.

I wiggled the compass and the needle swiveled to point me in the direction of the Academy. It wasn’t foolproof and I’d likely miss a path, but it was better than nothing. A swig of water and I was on my way.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

An hour of slow walking and I stumbled across a path. I could see the massive Avalon Academy now in the distance, a canopy of trees no longer blocking my vision. It was impossible to miss now, and I felt rather foolish for even using the locator item. I turned back and looked into the distance in the opposite direction. My mid-circle eyes picked out the shape of a carriage maybe a mile back, and I begrudgingly walked towards it.

Less than ten minutes and I came upon a fancy-looking carriage. As I approached, a geriatric voice rang out from the inside.

“Sir! Are you alright?” The voice asked, and an elderly looking man wearing a servant’s uniform poked his head out of the window. I sighed. Here was a man who evidently cared greatly for me, and I didn’t know his name. This would be a pain. I faked a stumble and collapsed to one knee.

“Bit by a slicktooth magic strangler,” I gasped. The name was, of course, gibberish, but I assumed the servant in front of me wasn’t too well educated. “My magic is cut off for a time, I need rest,” I finished before collapsing to the ground, presumably unconscious.

In hindsight, it wasn’t my finest moment to let a geriatric servant drag me into a plush carriage while I pretended to be unconscious in order to avoid having to use his name. Oh well. I had a feeling I’d be thinking those same two words a lot in the near future. While Jeeves, my chosen name for him at the moment, carried me into the carriage, I retreated into my mental construct.

A mental construct is a mnemonic device that spellcasters and other individuals of tremendous power use to organize their mind. It starts with imagining a room. Each room has 6 faces. They are numbered and the brain assigns a value, memory, or piece of information to each number. Step two is to separate each face into a set of 9 smaller squares. Now each face has 9 squares, so a room holds 54 pieces of information. Further development of the mental construct includes adding more rooms, creating Concept Farms, and constructing mental defenses. My current mental construct was more like a towering castle than any simple building, and the castle was shaking. I moved from room to room, each one a shape that defied euclidean geometry and confused the mortal minds that looked at it. Fuck, it even confused mine. The only saving grace was that I knew where just about everything was, so I didn’t have to try and take in the wall as a whole.

I traveled down the spiral stairs to a higher floor of my tower. I looked in the innermost room to see what laid outside of my mental construct. Across the vastness of the tiny open space sat a much more mundane mental construct, upside down from my twisted viewpoint. With a thought, I was at the doors. My reflection greeted me.

“Go away,” said Magnus Blackwood, leaned against the doors.

“No. I need information,” I replied curtly. Magnus scoffed.

“You expect me to help you, you twisted bodysnatcher?” He demanded, “You’ve stolen my body and are infiltrating the school for some nefarious purpose. What are you, a demon?” He gestured to my twisted mental construct tower with this last query. I shook my hand.

“No,” I make demons look like kittens, “I’m something else, and this was entirely unintentional. I’m afraid that our situation is the result of some divine meddling, and now I need to do something to fix it.”

I leveled my gaze at him. He met it and tilted his chin back in defiance.

“Here’s the thing, Magnus. I don’t need you to let me in. That would only make my life easier. There is absolutely nothing you could do to me to stop me from marching in there and tearing your mind apart to find what I need. I am attempting to protect you and those you care about who still exist out in the world so that you might be returned to them at a later date.”

This last part was, of course, a complete and total fabrication. God of Magic I might be, but I’d never been reincarnated and I had no clue that his sapience would still be present in my mindscape. It was disconcerting, but I found that I did mean it when I said I wanted to return his body to him in the future. I just needed to borrow it for a while. Magnus seemed unconvinced.

“You understand I can’t take your word at face value, right? I’m a fifth circle mage. There aren’t a great many things outside of demons that could take me on. And I specialize in spiritual combat.”

I sighed.

“That’s wonderful. First off, I guarantee you that you aren’t better than me. I guarantee it. Second of all, you aren’t a spirit. You’re a Sapience. Close, but not quite the same thing. You’re not locked inside of your spirit or anything like that. You’re not even a real thing. I don’t know where your spirit is, but it’s not here. If we engaged in battle, it’d be like wiping away a bad dream. That’s it.” I spoke these facts calmly, with no malice in my voice. Although Magnus was irritating, I didn’t actually want to kill him, and he didn’t strike me as the kind of person who would respond well to the thug approach of menace and threats.

Magnus wavered.

“I won’t allow a stranger into my mental construct. Who are you, stranger? What manner of fiend have I summoned unwittingly into my body?” God this guy was annoying. Hopefully people didn’t expect me to talk like that. It was fun sometimes, but not when I had to do it. I grimaced at his question, though. Names had power, especially names like mine. I couldn’t just tell him my name and hope he believed me.

The act of speaking it would reveal things that he might not recover from. I’d faked being asleep long enough, though. Even now, I could feel Jeeves patting my face and holding open my eyelids, trying to get me to wake up. I was running out of time.

I spoke, my body growing in size and taking on aspects of my true form as I introduced myself to the mortal’s sapience in front of me.

“I am First Ascended, God of Magic. I am the Reflection of the Soul, and the First Understander. I am the Arbiter of the Divine Council and the Fourth Lost God. I am Holder of Three Sorrows and Reader of Three Fates. I am He Who Replaced the Creator, and He Who Opened the Gate. My name is Mythendriel, and I thank you for your assistance.” I intoned, my body dwarfing the mindscape around us as I finished speaking.

I could feel the instability creeping in from my recollection of so many titles and the use of Magicke. There was magic like I used and like many other people used. That was intentional magic, magic that was used with a recipe and intent and all the other mumbo jumbo. There were textbooks about it.

Then there was Magicke, the fundamental rules of the world. These were Concepts and Laws and things that you just didn’t break–not because you couldn’t, but because you didn’t. To break them meant inviting things down on you that were best left undisturbed. There was some intent about it, sure, and there were things that you could understand and memorize. But the difference was inevitability.

With magic, you could speak the spell and draw the formation and do everything else you wanted to do and never actually cast the spell. With Magicke, there was no such luxury. It happened because it was going to happen, no mana required. Honestly, it was something I’d be doing a hell of a lot more research into given my current shortcomings with access to mana.

Back to Magnus, though.

The man paled as I shrunk back down, and he stepped aside from the door.

“I-I didn’t realize. How could I have known? I-I’m sorry,” He choked out, fearful for his existence. Divine Wrath wasn’t something that most people turned their nose up at, after all. I waved aside his fear.

“I meant what I said about not hurting you, Magnus. I’m going to care for your students and restore you to a body. In the process, we may even have a little fun,” I winked at him.

In hindsight, it was a poorly timed attempt at some humor, and the man didn’t visibly relax at all. I brushed past him and into the mindscape, which immediately began to shudder under the weight of my scrutiny.

I’d have to be quick.