[Short Story] Deity Finishing School (Patreon)

Part 1 - Getting Into God School

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Zane looks around in wonder as they walk around the school’s assembly hall. This wasn’t their first time in a multicultural, multi-species school. However, this place went way beyond that.

This was a school for deities, after all. While many of them had a form they're most comfortable with, their actual bodies can be anything with a few caveats based on stuff like how much space you’re taking up. That freedom was way beyond anything mortals could imagine. Though even if you restricted yourself to only the forms imaginable by mortals, the variety was astounding. 

Just in Zane’s vicinity there was a daydream, an Unseelie tooth fairy surrounded by a truly uncountable hive mind of teeth, and a piece of this place’s dimensional fabric. Though of course there were also the usual suspects. Every flavor of humanoid, monsters except they’ve taken the form of humanoids, dragons, and various animals. It was an eccentric gathering to say the least, nevermind a few that kept shifting forms. And all that in a group only a couple hundred strong, each of them a being that had gone through apotheosis in the recent past and became a deity.

Then, as one, everyone turned their attention to the front of the room as a God walked up to a small wooden podium. [Ahem, welcome to the 19th class for our dimensional cluster’s deity school. Now, some of you might question the usefulness of such a thing, after all, a part of becoming a deity is gaining knowledge of one’s own abilities.

[That feeling is hubris and false confidence. You can expand your abilities. We can help you deepen your godhood. All without the need to be worshiped by uncountable masses. While becoming a deity might depend on gaining a critical mass of faith. Well, you already have it and unless you burn it, that faith isn’t going anywhere.

[Sure, the easy path to power is having your religion, myth, tall tale, or what have you spread across worlds and fervently passed on. The only problem? Well, if I want to get stronger, even if I conquered all of your worlds and forced my religion on them, it wouldn’t be enough faith to boost me by even a single percent of a percent. AND YOU COULD NOT STOP ME.

[So good thing for you all that some time in the unimaginably distant past a clever deity figured out how to refine the faith they already had. Be even more thankful that they then wrote these secrets into the very foundation of the Omniverse. We are not the only ones with this knowledge, anyone that grows powerful enough will learn it automatically. However, within the known multiverse, we are the only dimensional cluster with a school for deities.

[Why? Because we like a dimensional cluster that is, not peaceful, I see more than a few war gods in here, but Civil. While we will guide you towards greater power, the fundamental lessons will be on etiquette. AND YOU WILL LEARN IT. YOU WILL FOLLOW IT.

[Us teaching you is not for us, it is for you. Because we don’t just expect, we require that everyone in this dimensional cluster does their best to follow proper etiquette. There is no rock you can hide under to escape our monitoring with this. Because, to break the rules, you inherently are interacting with others. Now let’s get everyone their class schedules!]

After that, the speaker guided the new deities to an office area where the school had a list of classes posted and there were five deities present to answer questions. Zane made sure to ask an important question. What were the restrictions?

The deity Zane asked, a fire elemental that identified as a lady, smiled and laughed like a gentle campfire. “Not going to just choose not to take any classes or maybe decide you’re some kind of wizbang genius and take all the classes?”

Zane raises an eyebrow, “This is a school for deities. If things were that easy, what would be the point?”

The fire lady nods, “True, yet so few realize that. It really does show that part of ascension is a big injection of arrogance. Anyway, this first semester is simple enough since they don’t expect you to know anything. You need two etiquette classes and will continue to need two every semester. They’re sort of a big deal. Besides that, this first time round, you get to pick two classes while we choose a third class for you.”

Zane, “So what’s my mandatory class?”

The lady shakes her head, “You don’t get to know until after you pick your others. We have a basic plan, but we always figure it is better if you choose a class on your own.”

Zane nods and turns their attention to the class list. There would presumably be more available later, but for now everything was quite basic. Not that they would be easy. Zane knew better than to think that.

Rather, most likely the more simple a class sounds, the tougher it would be. After all, the simpler something is, the stronger the foundation to build complexities upon. Though more interesting for Zane, was the etiquette classes.

Unlike the other classes, the available lessons on etiquette all have very simple names. Stuff like “sharing a world”, “religious competition”, and “allowing faith in others”. Though in the end, Zane decided to take shrine worlds and introductions.

As for their other classes? The two free choices they decided upon were “what is mana” and “what is a deity”. Zane was interested in seeing how those two were done with how basic the names were.

Though once they had picked those out, the fire elemental lady showed up again.

She smiled, “I see you’ve finished picking and I bet you can’t wait to find out what class we feel you need.”

Zane, “Well, I won’t know to go to it if you don’t tell me.”

The fire lady shrugged, “Fair enough. You’re being signed up for divine combat. We decided that not only did you lack personal knowledge of how a deity should fight. As a deity of magic, you need to fling spells with the best of them. And while your past lives helped build it up, you would be an idiot to not realize every other deity has something like that backing them up. Even deities created whole cloth by faith will have something. So we want to elevate you above the baseline most start off with.”

Zane, “I’m not one to go out of my way for a fight.”

The lady nods, “And if you had been, you wouldn’t need this class, instead getting assigned something like the class on calming mortal desires.”

Zane, “I guess that does make sense. Oh, but I do have one last question.”

The fire elemental raises an eyebrow, “Are you going to ask about when you’ll learn how to refine your faith?”

Zane shakes their head, “Nope. Since I did not see that on offer, I assumed it was being held back until the school was certain I understood the rules and etiquette well enough. No, I wanted to know what was up with the crystal decor.”

The lady laughs, “Well, deities, even ones as weak as you lot, can basically crush any sort of mortal material. Then if you get into any sort of deity specialized in destroying stuff? Even if we can rebuild the school in moments, it wouldn’t be worth the hassle, as people inevitably end up destroying stuff.

“So we built the school in an ancient deity’s base. Neither the oldest nor the most powerful deities know what is up with the crystals. However, we do know they’re made of divinity made physical, the place auto-repairs, and we can make it restructure itself. After all, it isn’t like this place was originally a school or anything.”

Zane, “Well that isn’t scary to think about. Let’s just put that all to the back of my mind. When do classes start and how long does a semester run?”

The lady shrugs, “Whatever makes you feel better. While not common, there were certainly deities in the past that couldn’t stand the idea of staying in here. Anyway, classes start tomorrow and each semester is a decade long.

“It was originally fifty years, but for such newly minted deities, you can’t leave your religions alone for that long. Mortals easily forget and you don’t have enough tradition behind your religion to keep it sustained. Wouldn’t want you to lose control and have another deity rise up. Not that we’re against having more, just that those who rise up from those situations rarely like the original. So, keeping you in touch is the price we pay to run this school as efficiently as possible.”

After that, the two chatted for a bit longer, but there wasn’t much else she could tell Zane. Well, at least not much that they wouldn’t be learning soon, anyway. Besides, she was a bit distracted, what with the fact that she, along with the other four, had all split off multiple clones of themselves and had been processing the entire group at the same time. A feat that impressed Zane to no end as they had trouble just controlling two bodies at once.

And so bright and early the next morning, Zane waits for the start of their “introductions” class. They aren’t the only one, but it seems they didn’t exactly schedule the social deities to this class. Presumably they have their own course for it.

Then a cat walked past everyone and entered the classroom. There was a pause, before everyone realized that must be their teacher. Said cat proceeded to turn into a tree behind the classroom’s podium and announced that class had started.

Once everyone had settled down, the tree became a circle of light. “There is no correct way to introduce yourself. I am not being trite. Even a simple ‘hello’ might not translate across a single world’s cultural melange, let alone across dimensions. While we have our official form of greeting, it is also wrong.”

The circle of lights turns into a giant gold coin. “However, within our dimensional cluster we accept this introduction as meaning you don’t mean offense beyond any actual stated offense. Obviously, if you know a deity, then you can form your own methods of greeting. Oh, and this is specifically for deities because it will be using what many refer to as” [All Speech.]

The gold coin melts into a pool that then projects a hologram of a mountain. [While calling it All Speech is a little pretentious, it is tradition and Divine Dialect didn’t catch on. All that aside, the key feature of All Speech is that it uses faith to project your voice instead of air, light, mental waves, or any other such methods.]

The pool dries up, and as it does, the mountain becomes real. [All Speech can in theory be used to talk to anything, but in reality it can only speak to those which have enough connection with you. Believers can always understand it. An animal on a planet where you have worshipers should be able to. A sapient sponge from another dimension might not even recognize it as you attempting to communicate.]

The mountain crumbles, leaving behind a detailed sculpture of a sea sponge. [Good thing we cheat in this dimensional cluster. It is already more effective between deities, but this school provides a much stabler connection.]

The sculpture has the outer layer flakes away, revealing a real sea sponge underneath. [The key to this however isn’t the language used or specific words, though I will be drilling those into you. Rather, it is the willingness to believe the person across from you isn’t out to break decorum. They might insult you, lie to you, or outright try to declare a death match.]

The sponge splits in half. One side becomes a drop of black ink, the other half a white feather. [However, throughout all that, they will be doing so from within the framework that our betters have decided upon. Now, there are some cultures out in the Omniverse that take advantage of a deity’s memory. Trade tongue being an example of this where everything has a word.]

The white feather dips itself in the black ink and writes out a list of rules. [We went the other direction. This is the simplest introduction we know of so far. There are exactly 37 points of interaction that need to happen before we even get into any actual conversation. Why 37? No clue, but every single class I’ve taught her has had at least one deity try and reduce the number.]

Around each letter, white paper begins to spread out until it makes a complete sheet. [They have all failed. However, do not take this as me discouraging you. Those on high very much wanted people to beat their head against this wall hoping someday someone will simplify it even further.]

Then there is a hand holding the paper and said hand reaches out to each deity in the classroom, leaving them with their own print out of the rules. [There is so much to learn and so I expect some degree of self study for this subject.]

And from there the teacher spent the next month teaching those 37 points of interaction in excruciating detail. As in, the first “day” of class lasted an entire month without sleep, food, or a break. Then, after a brief break of only a day, the next class started. Almost none of the students were ready for this.

So of course the school didn’t give them a choice in the matter. Zane was one of the luckier. They had already pushed their mind past this point, even as a mortal. Sometimes, you just need to cast a continent spanning ritual by yourself and if that means spending a couple months sitting in the center of said ritual while fully conscious? Well, where there’s a will, and magic, there’s a way.

And then this repeated for an entire decade. At which point Zane had exactly one year to get their flock in order before returning for another decade of school.

Repeat that a hundred or so times and you’ll have earned your diploma from the deity school. Zane was actually sort of disappointed when they found out it wasn’t a literal diploma. Then the school sent Zane back to their world.

Though they brought some things along with them. During school, Zane made a few friends who had complementary domains. Zilgoth, god of technology; Darren, god of nature; Sharon, goddess of home, hearth, and hospitality; and Nillian, deity of artistry. The five of them decided to team up as their own pantheon.

And so they passed around their religious texts to make sure everything squared up. Which after a thousand years of guided development by the school, there wasn’t. That made it a simple matter of making some copies and passing them around the group.

Once Zane made it back to their world, they used those copies to quickly spread the teachings of their four friends and the same was true on the friend’s worlds as well. While this wasn’t the same as adding four new world’s worth of faith. The school has taught and their experience proved out, no one deity can truly conquer a world.

There would always be unbelievers and in what to some deities might seem unbelievable, having a pantheon will actually increase the faith you can receive. Not only did Zane gain some extra faith from the four other worlds, the new faiths on their own world helped increase their reach. While people did convert to their friend’s faith. Those same converts, even the ones that had been atheists before, would end up sending a little bit of faith their way as well.

Truly, a rising tide raises all boats. While Zane was doubtful, the school had even claimed that having multiple deities of the same portfolio could be a net positive. That felt more like propaganda to Zane, but since they didn’t have personal experience, they would withhold judgment.