The rest of the class was uneventful in the same way first days of class always are. Zi-lor went over the syllabus and a couple of very basic applications of what they would be learning over the next few weeks, then dismissed the class early because it wasn’t like they were going to learn anything if she taught it now anyway. Henry was about to slip out of the room without speaking to anyone, but then decided that if he was going to try and overcome his predicament it needed to start now.

“Ma’am”

“What?,” Zi-lor quickly replied, turning from the door to face him.

“Where is the library?”

She provided directions,

“But it won’t do you any good to study independently.”

Henry felt that was harsh.

The library was an eighteen-story building that stretched far— well, it’s the same description as all the buildings, tall beyond sight, made of black marble, massive beyond all expectation. The scale of this city was too much for him to take in fully, so he stopped looking up and stared at the carved gray stone tiles that made up the walkway to the building itself.

Once inside he was quickly directed by a librarian with far too much enthusiasm to the section of his interest. Before he had the opportunity to ask where on the fourteenth floor, aisle 95, row 628, the books about godhood are, the librarian vanished without a trace, almost like he was avoiding Henry deliberately.

Henry began to browse shelf after shelf of scrolls and books bound in modern fashion intermixed with loose piles of papers held together by string, but the titles were meaningless. It wasn’t that he couldn’t understand the language, an unintended side-effect of his godly power was understanding of matters he should have no knowledge of, and yet the words carried no meaning despite their understood language.

“Archonic Ways: The Legacy of Yaldabaoth and its Interactions with Quiescent Matter”

“On Quintessence”

“The Meaning and Practice of Death”

That one meant something, but it was entirely off-topic. How was he supposed to browse tens of thousands of books and scrolls with no guidance?

Even works that actually made sense were pointless; when they were directly about godhood there was no interest in examining how to reverse it. It would be like undeveloping the nuclear program. To what end would someone disarm themselves when their enemies have the technology you’re about to lose? And it wasn’t like nation-states considered the impact of fallout on those nearby the testing sites; so too did it seem the side-effects of godhood weren’t something to be mitigated against, only acknowledged as inevitable and part of the price of supreme magical power.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

He returned to his dorm, distraught. It seemed necessary to involve Chen-Thai and Zi-Lor as much as necessary in this process. He had hoped to leverage Master Chen’s power for his own ends in as much secrecy as possible, but perhaps he could ask about it discreetly. This wasn’t something it seemed likely he would be able to fix on his own, at least.

Henry looked around the outside of his dorm before he went inside— a fifteen by fifteen by fifty foot box of bamboo with no windows, yet he distinctly remembered a window in his bedroom. Opening the door he was greeted with a huge foyer some fifty feet to a side, his room to the right against a wall, bathroom he had been fireballed inside some ten feet farther right than that. It had become clear the building really was bigger on the inside, but that quickly became a triviality when he noticed some ten women standing and kneeling in front of him.

“Welcome home!” rang out in dissonance— apparently they needed to practice that.

A left eyebrow raised on Henry’s face and a scowl greeted him on the face of a blonde woman with piercing green eyes dressed in a bright blue sundress.

“Ah, you’re the one who burned me this morning,” he noted.

“And I’ll do it again if you act like a creep. I’m doing this because I have to, so leave me alone.”

She got up to leave.

Henry said nothing. It wasn’t wrong of her to feel that way, and on the other hand there were still nine other women he hadn’t soured to.

Eight of them followed her away.

Only one, a brunette dressed in a maid outfit, remained in the foyer, kneeling, though began to stand. Henry offered a hand, but she didn’t take it.

“So I know this is a bit of a weird question, but why are there so many women in my dorm?”

“I don’t know why the others are here, but it was the best way to get into the academy if I agreed to live with you.”

“Ok, but why women? I’m straight but how do they even know?”

“What do you mean?”

“I haven’t given them any way to know my preferences.”

“Oh, I heard you were new to our sect, but I didn’t realize… ok. So we have magic that can do everyday tasks right? We also have magic gaydar and stuff like that.”

“What?”

“Magic gaydar? Haven’t you heard of it? This kind of situation is pretty common across much of our recorded history.”

“Um, ok.”

“So… why did the others leave?”

“I mean, you did assault one of us earlier.”

“It was an accident!”

“But you haven’t even apologized.”

“She blasted me into a wall and left before I could even see what she looked like!”

“And that was your primary concern?”

“Look, I didn’t mean to do that and I’ll apologize and make up for it if I can, but it doesn’t seem fair to judge me like that given one accident. Plus, you’re here because of me right? So why are you so cold?”

The maid flinched, opened her mouth, closed it again, turned around, and left.