[Short Story] Getting Into God School (Patreon)

Zare sat in what some of his followers would call the lotus position. That wasn’t the original name for it, but over the eras, various old souls had done as they always do and polluted the local language with words from their old lives. Zare had done much the same a number of times. Now, though, Zare had survived long enough that they hoped to finally escape the cycle.

The first step had honestly been counter intuitive. Zare had been too many worlds where people could rise to power through their own efforts and so for their first hundred years, had focused on that. Except a wall stopped them. Literally.

Some idiot had built a wall of power around this planet to prevent others from rising up. At first, Zare thought this would be another failure, their life running out and their soul passing onto the next. As for who to blame? The answer was obvious: the world had only a single god and that dick very much moved to root out any other beliefs.

From Zare’s studies, this hadn’t always been the case. In fact, it was only about ten thousand years into the “new” calendar. Called the enlightened era to represent the fact everyone saw the light and converted to following Vic, God of Light. Oh, and if you’re around one of his churches, you better mentally capitalize it properly, because they use mind magic to detect when people don’t show the appropriate amount of reverence.

That wouldn’t be a problem anymore. The idiot had built the wall from the outside because they trusted the measures they put in place. A foolish thought, as anyone who could become a true deity should already know about old souls. Nothing is secure against their meddling. Even entire dimensions without sapient life might have one show up, let alone a low-tech middle-magic society. Places like that attract old souls like nothing else.

Anyway, Zare realized that if Vic was so particular about having basically a faith generator in his back pocket, there must be something to it. So since the cosmic energies you would normally use to ascend were blocked off, Zare would steal the goose that lays golden eggs, which is right in front of him.

The church that Vic had set up was pretty water tight. There were even things set up to fix any drifts in the teachings. Zare tore it all apart.

When magic is real and a god can’t actually descend, well, their miracles can easily lose their luster. All it took was for Zare to spread a few nifty new spells. For instance, a light based healing spell.

From there, Zare simply inserted themself as the origin of new magic. One particular spell that gained popularity was a cantrip to guard your mind. Would it protect you from someone trying to dig around in your memories? No, but it would certainly prevent passive stuff like a certain church used.

Of course, there was a bunch of fighting and strife. Vic’s Church even brought out a few angels of immense power to try and cull the heretics. This didn’t work. Without a deity channeling power to them, an angel is at best a powerful mortal and at worst a braindead construct. And Vic wasn’t going to leave actual mortals in this world that understood how to raise themselves up.

And so finally, after many years of strife, a new calendar was started and the age of magic started. With, of course, Zare as a faceless being handing out new spells and power. People didn’t even technically think of them as a deity, but they worshiped Zane nonetheless, despite not realizing it. They truly believed they had advanced beyond religion and gods.

Zane didn’t care as in the year 392, nearly four centuries after their hidden conquest of this world, they finally ascended. It was at that point their senses were able to pierce the wall left by Vic. And what do you know? There Vic was, banging on his own wall in anger. It seems that he wasn’t too happy about what Zane had done. Their eyes met and Zane just smiled as the angry god fruitlessly beat in the wall he had set up such that no deity would be able to interfere with his world.

Then all hell broke loose.

First time froze, which sort of made everything that happened afterwards a bit of a jumble, what with it literally happening in the same moment. Though as deities, both Zane and Vic were able to parse it, even if they couldn’t respond.

Anyway, the skies went dark, great bolts of nega-lightning and clouds of bone dissolving cold mist blew through the wall, and an unfathomably large eye opened up. Neither Zane nor Vic could see the end of said eye and yet they felt that there was a person there and this wasn’t some illusion or a being made of just an eye. Also, despite the size clearly being so great that at the edges the light from it still shouldn’t have reached them, it had appeared all at the same moment. Which to be fair, time was frozen so some shenanigans needed to be happening for stuff to happen in the first place.

Then the voice spoke.

[Hmm, I detected only one new deity and yet here I find another who hasn’t graced our halls? Tut tut! I’ll have to talk to whoever was watching when you rose up. Now let’s see what you two have been up to.]

Within the pupil of the eye, an exact reflection of the world appears and begins to wind backwards, revealing what had come before. Of course, with time frozen, to the two deities this seemed to take no time at all, despite both of them being sure that it had played out in reverse at normal speed. Anyway, it revealed that Vic wasn’t even originally from this world. Rather, he had one day stumbled upon it and waged bloody war against the native spirits.

[Well. If not here, where are you from wayward god?]

The scene in the eye locks onto Vic’s image and continues to rewind, though this time even in the timeless moment, it takes about a cup of tea’s worth of time. This reveals that Vic has originated from a far off world and when he couldn’t conquer the other deities that had shared it with him, he blew up the sun. Then Vic had spent countless ages floating through the void of space until he reached the current world.

[*Sigh* So many troubles come from THEIR space. Part of the reason I’m here, in fact. Though sadly it is too late for you.]

The image in the eye speeds forward until Vic reaches a certain point in the void. Zane doesn’t know how, but despite it giving no indication, there is a clear divide and the moment the past Vic crosses that divide? Black flames manifest around him and reduced not only his physical manifestation, but his godhead to ashes.

Within the timeless moment, neither Zane nor Vic are sure what this is meant to do. Except Vic is now less than ashes and the world around Zane shifts violently. Memories Zane doesn’t remember experiencing flow into their mind. Memories of their apotheosis being the result of peacefully teaching the world about magic as they try and figure out what is stopping them from absorbing the cosmic power all around them. There is no Vic.

[Ah, much better! And look at that, you scored a purer portfolio for it. That will be useful for you when the new semester starts! Be joyous for you have been enrolled in our pantheon’s majestic, one of a kind as far as we know, deity school. You have no choice in the matter. The new semester begins in 64 of your world’s years. There is no escape.]

The eye closed and it seemed as if the rest of the sky was painted on the eyelids, only for any semblance of an eye to fade away. Then time started again and Zane panicked. In fact, Zane panicked for a good six years.

It would have been longer, but becoming a deity apparently did something to the mind and allowed Zane to recover. After all, it isn’t every day that you get to see time manipulated on such a high level. Sure, Zane could pull a party trick or two and see a moment forward or deep into the past. However, Zane was only able to see and not touch. So to know there was a being capable of unmaking their very existence? Not exactly the healthiest knowledge to have.

Though it probably helped that this wasn’t the first time Zane was in a situation like this. Well, not this exact situation. Previous times just involved powerful beings such as archmagi or high ranked cultivators. And what those times had taught them was how to judge if they could escape. The answer was actually yes more often than not, as being an old soul gave you more tricks than not.

This time, though, Zane knew there was no escape. Hell, whoever that eye represented had likely already looked ahead and seen what was to come. So instead of running around, Zane waits in their divine realm. An afterlife for true believers and a general place of power that in theory should protect them from most threats. Suffice it to say, Zane didn’t particularly trust that part anymore. What good is a turtle shell if your opponent can kill you before you are even born?

And so the remaining years flow by, with Zane focusing mostly on securing his religion. As while they don’t need any more faith to continue his current state, this path obviously needs more of it to advance and as that eye has shown, there was a lot of room to grow. Still, there is only so much any one world can provide and Zane has seen more than a few disasters created by other old souls who try to forcefully raise stuff like the tech level.

Then, right as Zane manages to get everything sorted and without them realizing it, 64 years had passed and suddenly they were elsewhere.

Around Zane, everything seemed to be made of crystal, except it wasn’t any sort of mortal mineral. While Zane wasn’t able to determine exactly what it was, the crystals that made up the structure and furniture felt like divinity made physical. Which is crazy, because all divinity is, is a deity’s power. It doesn’t have a physical form even if it can be turned into many things.

Though while Zane is freaking out about that, they do notice that the room they are in looks quite similar to a fancy dorm room like he has seen in some pre-solar high tech societies. However, it can’t be emphasized enough at how fancy things were. This wasn’t your average dorm room, but rather a dorm room you would expect to see at some ancient college which is reserved for the children of big time donors and yet still cost an arm and a leg to stay in.

And it is at this point that Zane realizes his divine sense can’t penetrate the crystal material. Or rather, as they take a closer look, the crystal can be made opaque as while the wall and a chair are made of the same material, Zane can see through the chair, but not the wall.

Though before Zane can get too into checking everything in the rooms that make up his dorm, a bell chimes and somehow whoever has rung it, managed to include a very long set of instructions within the noise as well as a warning that choice in following them was an illusion. For Zane specifically, this meant they had to leave their dorm room, head through the portal at the end of the hall, and then mingle with the other new students.

So with a sigh, Zane turns away from the bed which somehow could tell if whoever was in it wanted it to be opaque or not and walked out to his new life.