Chen-Thai looked at Henry like an insane person, because he was. Unfortunately, having a psychotic break was not sufficient reason to break the pact the grand elder had made with Henry, so he sighed but ultimately decided it was best not to mess with the mess of a man writhing on the ground any further. Henry had briefly snapped to his senses to make some grand declaration about fixing himself, but that didn’t last for long. Chen-Thai stepped back over to his uncomfortable wooden chair and sat down, leaned it back, folded his hands, placed them over his eyes, and went to sleep. When he woke up it was nighttime.

“Wonderful, I’m not going to sleep at all tonight!”

Henry was laying on Amanda’s bed, feet dangling to the floor with his arms supporting him uncomfortably just well enough to not engage the muscles. Chen-Thai stood with the creaking discomfort of a man twice his already advanced age, but almost fell forward when a sharp pain shot up his lower back. He quickly braced it with his hands and popped it forward, moving to get Henry as he recovered from the mistake that was falling asleep on what may as well have been a slab of stone.

“Come on, let’s go.”

He reached out a hand to pull on Henry’s shoulder, and though he hesitated before actually doing so, ultimately decided to lightly tug him away from Amanda’s bedside. He seemed to be less… hostile in the moment.

Henry was delirious and had been for many hours. He did not remember the trip to the bed in which he found himself the next morning. Having a little break from reality was nice and refreshing, but he ultimately still needed to proceed in the way he had decided unless he wanted a more permanent break next time.

Light streamed in from horizontal wooden window blinds striped across a thin vertical window that spanned the wall across from the door of his small room. He was surprisingly refreshed for having slept in a hammock, since Henry had always thought the ropes would be stiff and eat into his skin. They didn’t, but he quickly came to understand the other drawback of sleeping in hammocks— when he tried to escape it he couldn’t. After a minute or two struggling, he finally face planted into the tatami mat that was the floor.

All things considered he was quite lucky the floor wasn’t made of stone or something. His nose bled all the same. There was no door to this room, only a curtain of wooden panels much like the blinds. He quickly pushed them aside and looked around the room, nose pinched between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, frantic to find anything to stop the flow of blood.

Unfortunately, he was unsuccessful. Henry did make it to a marble sink-like fixture, but when he released his fingers to allow the blood to drain it splattered all over his clothes. Apparently it had pooled with his fingers blocking the flow, and now his new intricately-weaved black and gold robes had a fresh crimson accent across the chest that faded into the abdomen.

“What are you doing, we’re going to be late!” a feminine voice called from behind.

Henry did not turn to her to avoid getting his blood anywhere else, but she decided to force the issue. Henry’s hand shot up to try and plug his nose again, but instead of clamping his nose, he clamped her nipple.

She let out a scream and blasted him into the stone wall behind him with a fireball.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Watch what you’re doing, idiot!”

Henry didn’t even catch a glimpse of her before she was gone, understandably so considering he had just groped her. The fire stung, but he ultimately brushed it off. What was painful about the situation, was that his robes now had a giant hole in the abdomen where his pudgy stomach now hung out. The clothes seemed to be somewhat fire-retardant, so they were only lightly singed around where the ball had made contact, but everything the fireball directly touched was gone in a perfectly spherical hole centered about two inches above his belly-button for some seven inches of diameter.

Henry went back to his room to find a change of clothes, but there was none. There wasn’t even a dresser or closet in the room to be found, only a hammock and a small potted plant whose details Henry didn’t care to recognize as a more important thought took their place in his head.

“Wait, I’m going to be late? Late for what? Where am I?”

He decided to exit the seeming dormitory and get a better understanding of where he was. It seemed very unusual to have a co-ed living space in a medieval-style setting, but whatever, he was willing to roll with it.

It seemed likely that Chen-Thai had taken him here in his stupor to fulfill his agreement to train Henry into the kind of force that could protect them, though he no longer had any such desire to use the kind of force he was currently capable of. He needed new styles of magic, or he was going to have to take a lot of needless punches. Henry shrugged,

“Oh well, it’s the best I can do. I’ll find more clothes later.”

The second he opened the door to his dormitory he was greeted with about fifteen quickly-turning heads and stares. It seemed his building was very near the campus entrance, so ignoring the onlookers he simply joined their flow toward the smooth inner black walls of the academy whose golden gates were currently open.

“That doesn’t seem very defensible considering how weak gold is in comparison to other metals,” he muttered pedantically to himself, but jolted at realizing someone else had heard his comment and decided to correct him.

“You don’t think those are actually used for combat, do you?” a masculine voice came from behind as a beefy hand gripped Henry’s right shoulder.

“Well what’s the purpose of having a gate if not for defense?”

“To, you know, stop random students from entering the building after hours? Not every gate is meant to stop an elder, and for that matter most couldn’t even hope to try. I don’t mean to be rude, but could you even get through it yourself?”

Henry’s feet left the ground only slightly before he realized it would be incredibly stupid of him to show off any further. The man noticed and let out a small gasp of shock.

“Oh, you can fly. Of course you can fly. Why else would they give you a co-ed dorm so close to the main hall…”

He sounded exasperated.

“You mean co-ed dorms aren’t normal?”

“What, no? It’s improper for one, and entirely immoral for another. It’s special treatment for students the academy considers better than all the rest.”

“Oh, yeah, ok.”

“What do you mean, “yeah, ok”? I’ve never even heard of you and I’ve heard of everyone they’ve ever given this kind of treatment to. The last time they used that dorm was last century.”

“It’s tiny though?”

“Have you even looked around inside? Everything I’ve ever read says it’s bigger on the inside.”

“Well no, I was in a rush to get…where are we going?”

The man let out an exasperated sigh.

“To the entrance ceremony?”

“If you aren’t familiar with our basic customs, why are you even here?”

Henry didn’t care to answer that, instead he brushed the other man’s arm off his shoulder and said something to the effect of

“You’ll see.”