Henry’s next morning was uneventful and he encountered no one. There was food on a twenty foot heavy oak table at the center-end of the foyer, which apparently also served as the entrance to a dining hall through a set of arches in the ceiling he hadn’t noticed before. At its far end next to a huge set of windows that overlooked… the sky? Henry approached them as the smell of a full English awaited him— toast, beans, eggs, ham, sausage, mushrooms, and tomatoes, all without a trace of seasoning to be found— and the fact an old-world breakfast was there became rather trivial. The view through these windows was like he overlooked the world. In front of him, many thousands of feet beneath were clouds whose billowing white streams were forcefully redirected by huge black walls that jutted many hundreds of feet above them, yet still far below Henry’s current vantage point.

He almost forgot to eat, only managing to get through a quarter of his breakfast before a knock came on the door. He threw the remaining piece of toast in his mouth and opened it,

“Hthi”

“Hthi?” Chen-Thai asked.

“Yeaths, hthi,” Henry affirmed.

As they walked through the gate of the school and towards the building that contained his classroom, Henry finished his toast, and then Chen-Thai finally announced why he was there.

“Sorry for not checking in before now, but I’m running this year’s program so I’ve been quite busy.”

“How was your first day?” He continued.

“It was fine, but when I came back to the dorm my suitemates were rather cold to me.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, they greeted me but left immediately after. A maid stayed behind for a few minutes, but even she left before I could learn her name.”

“I see. We’ll straighten that out.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure, and how were your classmates? I trust they weren’t so cold?”

“I don’t know, you know how first days of class are. Not much has happened yet.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“But you haven’t talked to them?”

“Well no, as you said, I have other business to attend to.”

“Like what?”

Henry paused.

“... like… you know… the thing I asked about.” He was clearly embarrassed by the moment of insanity shared with Master Chen, someone who he should present his best face towards.

“Ah. That. Anything in particular?” Master Chen truly was a master of not pressing the issue.

“I tried to look into it myself, but the library doesn’t have the information I seek.”

Now Chen-Thai was confused, unable to answer for several seconds.

“...What is the “it” you refer to?”

“How to mitigate the effects of godhood.”

“We discussed this; you don’t need to mitigate the sharpness of a sword. That which it cuts is a natural consequence of its nature. You can’t stop a sufficiently sharp blade from cutting through a poorly-made scabbard by any means less than dulling it with a rock.”

“And yet what if I don’t want to break the scabbard?”

“As I said, you would need to procure a rock.”

“And what exactly would a rock be in this case?”

“Your scabbard.”

“What?”

“Your scabbard.”

“I heard you the first time but what is that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve come to embody a god, and not just any god, a strong one. It’s not trivial to remove it like some piece of trash. If anything, your soul is the trash wrapping its power.”

“But more than that,” Chen-Thai continued, “its sword is intrinsically bound to your scabbard. They can’t be split by anything short of your permanent death, and the metaphor of a sword and its scabbard only goes so far.”

“The energy of Yaldabaoth preserves the world as it once was, yes? So too is your godhood bound to restore your self, but not to what you used to be, but to the ideal of what meshes most closely with your god.”

Finally he came to the heart of the issue.

“If you want to preserve what you were there are two options:”

“stop interacting with your god's power and allow it to wane,”

“or kill yourself.”

A heavy silence bound the air.

“There is, of course, always the option of allowing your god to remake you in its image. It would be a gradual process as I’m sure you’ve already experienced, so you wouldn’t even really notice it happening if you don’t actively pay attention to it, and by the end you would never have wanted to return to what you used to be anyway.”

They finally arrived at the entrance to Henry’s classroom, so Chen-Thai gave his parting words,

“Give it some thought. Even if you lose yourself would that be so bad? Think about what you have to gain. Everything in this world comes at a cost. If you want power, then it must always be at the expense of something else.”

Henry entered the classroom, and Chen-Thai left.