“How dare he?” Jora muttered for what had to be the twentieth time that evening.

  It had been roughly a week since that idiot little [Bard] had spoken to her, and somehow the comment had rooted itself in her mind like a splinter she could not remove. Her back hurt?

  Because of her boobs? The sheer audacity. They were glorious. Spectacular. Magnificent in both scale and bounce. Entire temples had been built in admiration of them. Wars had probably almost started over less. People whispered about them in taverns, painted them, composed ballads. And he had the nerve to imply they were less than perfect.

  She had replayed the conversation so many times she could practically hear his tone. Not cruel. Not mocking, it just seemed to slip out of him. Just observational.

  Who was he to observe her?

  The amount of time she had spent thinking about this was beginning to annoy even herself, which only made her more irritated.

  “Excuse me, Exalted One?” a soft voice ventured from somewhere near her hip.

  Jora blinked and looked down, her thoughts snapping. A [Priest] stood beside her, hands folded nervously.

  “Yes?” she asked, distracted.

  “I apologize for interrupting, Glorious One, but the eager [Warrior] you were sitting upon has been unconscious for at least ten minutes. I worry that he may perish soon and that the odor and decomposition may soon become inconvenient for you.”

  Jora frowned faintly and glanced downward. The man upon whose face she sat had indeed stopped moving entirely. She shifted her weight experimentally. Nothing.

  “Oh,” she said, mildly surprised. “I didn’t notice.”

  She stood up with unhurried grace, smoothing her hair as though that were the most important detail. “These hosts are so fragile. Theeey should really pace themselves.”

  The priest bowed and quietly signaled for attendants to handle the man while Jora surveyed the temple once more.

  Byto’s temples were never subtle. They were loud, overflowing, unapologetically indulgent monuments to excess. To her left, several [Bards] were playing music at a volume that seemed less artistic and more aggressive. The rhythm thudded through the marble floor while dancers pressed against one another in enthusiastic and suggestive movements. A few had already collapsed into tangled humping piles on the ground, encouraged by spectators who clapped and cheered.

  Jora caught herself glaring at those with the [Bard] class before her gaze moved past them.

  To her right, a line of high-level [Warriors] stood shoulder to shoulder with open barrels of ale, chugging with competitive intensity. Each of them was well above level 50, their constitutions so inflated that the alcohol likely struggled to keep up. At that point, drinking contests were less about tolerance and more about internal volume.

  Jora nodded approvingly.

  Celebration. Admiration. Physicality. It was comfortable territory.

  She began walking toward the other side of the temple. As she moved, she could feel most of the eyes in the room follow her, their eyes following her body as her giant breasts bounced and her thighs swayed side to side.

  She headed toward the raised platform at the head of the temple where a long table overflowed with food in impossible colors and questionable origins. Meats shimmered in hues not commonly associated with livestock. Fruits glowed faintly. Platters refilled themselves without servants touching them.

  At the center of it all sat Byto.

  He reclined in a throne, chewing enthusiastically on a slab of purple meat. Juice dripped down his wrist as he watched her approach with open amusement.

  “Hey, Jora,” he called out casually, amusement in his voice, mouth still half full. “You’ve got that face again.”

  She blinked. “What face?”

  “The one where you’re pretending you’re not obsessing over something.”

  She quickly said. “I am not ooobsessing!”

  Byto raised an eyebrow but did not stop chewing.

  She crossed her arms, which only emphasized the very thing she was trying not to think about, as to cross her arms she had to bring them almost level to her chin to cross them over her breasts. The comment replayed in her mind again. Her back hurt. The sheer nerve, and yet the thought lingered, uncomfortable and persistent.

  Still, the fact that the idea existed irritated her.

  “I am merely reflecting,” she corrected primly. “On idiot audacity.”

  Byto grinned wider. “Uh huh.”

  Jora lifted her chin, trying to project effortless divinity, though internally she was circling the same thought in increasingly dramatic spirals. She was magnificent. Universally admired. Objectively ideal. Entire cults existed for less compelling attributes. The idea that one single mortal host could look at her and evaluate anything felt wrong in a way she could not quite articulate.

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  And that, perhaps, bothered her more than the comment itself.

  She shifted her weight again and resisted the sudden urge to roll her shoulders experimentally.

  t that moment, a woman with steins of beer came over and offered drinks to the two gods.

  Over her head, the [Windtalker] hung.

  Jora waved a dismissive hand at the offer, but Byto’s eyes lingered on the woman. “Nothing for me,” he said as he put his feet up onto the table. “I want you to work some of that magic you have on me. Suck my toes.”

  The woman nodded and began to take Byto’s shoes off after placing the tray down.

  Jora sighed, turning to him. “You’ve been agonizing on it, that little [Bard]’s words, since we left the ADMIN room. Doesn’t take a genius that whatever he said stuck with you.”

  Jora just glared at Byto and pouted at him with way-too-big lips.

  “Look,” he said, “he’s probably one of the first people that wasn’t an ADMIN that you didn’t have a magical effect over in years.” He paused, looking down as the [Windtalker] had begun to suck his big toe. “Good touch. Like your technique,” he said to her. “Remind me to grant you a boon later.”

  “Anyways,” he said, continuing his thought as though nothing had broken his concentration, “Vyn’kai gave him [Influence Immunity], meaning that the dozens of little magics you typically have going on that affect everyone around you weren’t working on him. No mental magic, no sex magic, no pheromones, nothing.”

  “Your point?” Jora said dryly.

  “My point is that every little person you meet is so enchanted by you, and your body, and your magic, that they never tell you non-influenced thoughts.”

  “So,” said Jora, “everyone on the cohort has been free to share their thoughts. I mean, most of those assholes won’t shut up about it.”

  “Yeah,” he said, leaning back with pleasure as the [Windwalker] hit a good spot. “When’s the last time you paid attention to that, to any of them?”

  She nodded slightly to the side, acknowledging his point.

  “And,” he said, “over the years, you have… let’s say, over-increased your body. When we first came to this world and became the goddess of sex, you looked pretty close to mortal. But you slowly started increasing what the humans seems to think is attractive. You made yourself overly thin, while increasing the size of your hips and breasts and your lips. You started to talk strangely, too, for some reason.”

  “Yeah, but I still look human.”

  “Yeah, but most humans don’t have to turn sideways to get through doors,” responded Byto.

  He waved her response back. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know some of our cohort has changed and modified their bodies way, way beyond yours. Jeez, have you seen Midhohoffer? What he’s done to himself?”

  “Midhohoffer?” Jora responded. “The god of monsters?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Heard he got weirdly obsessed with teeth for some reason,” Byto continued, scratching absentmindedly at his chest while the [Windwalker] switched to his other foot. “Started small at first. A fang here. A shark row there. Said something about purity of predation or whatever philosophical nonsense he was on that century.”

  He leaned back further, clearly comfortable.

  “Now he’s basically just a giant amorphous blob of teeth. All different sizes. Animal. Human. Monster. Just layered over each other like some kind of cursed mosaic. When he moves, they grind. Constantly. Like a landslide made of ivory.”

  Jora blinked slowly.

  “Does he even have a face anymore?” she asked.

  “I don’t think he has eyes at this point,” Byto replied casually. “Just teeth. Everywhere. Rows opening and closing. Sometimes new ones push through older ones. It’s… yeah. It’s weird.”

  He shrugged.

  “Still technically within portfolio, though.”

  “Anyways,” continued Byto, “when’s the last time you tried to look normal and not as a god? I do it every now and then, it’s definitely interesting. Turn off all our defaults and wander around. It definitely puts things in perspective.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “Maybe not the worst idea.”

  Jora walked through the capital city of the Empire and tried not to fidget. It felt wrong, though not physically wrong. Physically she felt smaller, balanced, and contained. Her proportions had been altered downward into something far more mortal. Her hips no longer defied architecture. Her chest no longer arrived in rooms before she did. Her lips were still full, but realistically so, and her waist no longer looked like it had been cinched by divine editing tools.

  Above her head hovered a simple designation:

  [Warrior] Level 20

  It bobbed faintly in the evening air like it belonged there, and she resisted the urge to reach up and swat at it.

  Her magic was muted. Not gone, but sealed away. No pheromonal haze, no passive aura of fascination, no subtle mental hooks nudging admiration into place. She had stripped it all back to baseline, something close to mortal-adjacent.

  The city bustled around her with real noise and real smells. Sweat, bread, animal dung, and ale mixed together in the open air. Nothing filtered. Nothing sweetened. Maybe Byto’s right, she thought, though the idea sat uncomfortably in her mind.

  She adjusted the leather bracer on her wrist. It was plain, functional, and scuffed, the kind of thing a level twenty [Warrior] might actually own. She had studied the posture too, shoulders squared, movements just a little stiff, the stance of someone competent but not legendary.

  A tavern stood ahead of her, warm light spilling out into the cobbled street. Laughter drifted through the open door, and the sign above it creaked slightly in the wind. This was ridiculous. She was Jora, God of sex, object of worship and orgasm. She did not wander in quietly. Still, she inhaled once and steadied herself. No aura, no influence, just presence.

  Her plan, if it could even be called that, was simple. Sit, observe, have a drink, and people-watch. A quiet night. The concept felt foreign and unstructured. Normally she entered spaces as the event. This time she would simply be in one.

  She pushed the tavern door open. The interior was crowded but not chaotic. Several long tables ran across the room, half-filled with merchants, travelers, and a few city guards off duty. A pair of actual [Bards] played in the corner, softer than Byto’s temple musicians, their music conversational rather than overwhelming.

  For a split second, no one reacted. No heads snapped toward her, no sudden hush fell over the room, and no subtle widening of pupils followed her entrance. She received only a few glances and quick assessments. Stranger. Female. [Warrior]. Level twenty. One man looked her up and down and returned to his stew. Another offered a polite nod. That was it.

  Jora stood there a heartbeat too long, waiting for something to happen, and nothing did. The whole experience was underwhelming.

  She walked toward the bar deliberately, aware of her hips in a way she never had been before. Were they moving normally? Was that too much sway or too little? Did mortals think about this constantly? She slid onto a stool as the bartender approached, wiping his hands on a rag.

  “What’ll it be?”

  She almost said something extravagant, something indulgent that required a garnish and admiration. Instead she paused and answered simply. “Aaa..Ale. Whatever’s normal.”

  The bartender grunted and poured without ceremony.

  She stared at the mug and wondered if this was what a quiet night was supposed to feel like.