I find myself dropped into a sea, a literal sea, the waters splashing around my outfit, miserable in the vagaries of the water built for the astral.

I gasped, splashing around in the water, my lungs breathing in real air for the first time in presumably months. I swim like a startled octopus, as I keep my head above water, but I am thankfully doing it easily. My mock swimming in the substance of the astral doing me good. My head swivels around, searching for a shore, but as I do, I see them rising from the water.

I see seven masks rise from the water, the water falling off them in dozens of streams. Each mask looks as if you took a plaster cast of a mythical creature's face. Each is a unique exemplification of the person beneath them, their very image radiating out of their soul. I can’t continue to stay afloat while aghast at this strange sight. My arms fail me as I flail in the water, falling into the depths. But before I can fall any further, I am suddenly pulled up, and they boom.

"GOOD ENOUGH" their voices, a strange chorus of seven monsters.

And I am torn away from the sea.

—

I clatter onto the steel floor of my tiny room, my knees hitting the floor like thrown chopsticks but still holding the book tightly in my arms. I spit and cough as the air is forced out of my lungs. My throat throbs, almost demanding that I scream from the floor of my room.

"What the fuck was that! Why were there a bunch of floating masks? Who were they, where did I go, and when was I judged?" I say sputtering in outrage and confusion.

Although I am also just sputtering my clothes soaked in seawater and dripping water onto the floor as I rise on my hands from my prone position.

I hiss in pain, and rage as I stand up from the cold steel floor, trembling in barely contained rage at the indignity done to me, left here soaking wet as strangers judged my personhood. Before looking down at the floor and realizing in a flash of clarity that I’ve got to clean this shit up.

The water I tasted in the sea was salty, and this might be my only chance to get some salt, and I won’t waste it so that I may spend time spitting on people I cannot see.

So I take my poor clothes off—one of my creations I made while wiling away the times—and wring them dry into a hastily emptied water tankard. I then mark the tankard as if I were a mother labeling her kitchenware and breathe a long, tired sigh tinged with melancholy. The reminder of home adds to my sorrow as I place the tankard in a corner so that it can be transferred to my new base's storage room.

But before I think of the new base, I have to examine what the hell just happened. Because when I unpeeled the book, I definitely went somewhere— I think while looking at the tankard filled with seawater in the corner.

But how was I teleported? With what magic? Can I talk to them, ask them for tips? I shake my head; these questions ain’t worth anything. Let’s think about what we can figure out. Who the fuck they are. Because I have plenty of clues in that department.

One possibility is that they are automatic spirits, like the really smart golems that nearly killed me. If they are smart enough to do that, they might be able to do what those masks did. But comparing intelligence is hard, and while artificial intelligence is grand, as humanity should know being the pioneers of it in this age, it would struggle with making decisions based on worth.

And they are a close comparison once you look at how the golems and such acted. The golems were terrible at strategy but amazing at bombarding me with projectiles. Similarly, artificial intelligence is much better suited to something like attack algorithms, even if humanity outlawed AIs access to weaponry a long time ago. I shudder thinking of the sheer outrage and terror that were thrust upon me, and I decisively agree that this was a prudent law.

Another possibility could be that they are advisors or other humans placed inside the magic item. Like a brain upload into a magic item, no one has managed to upload their brains to the internet so far, but the varied species of the galactic community have been trying for decades. It makes sense that magic could do the same, most likely easier due to magic mambo jumbo. But if you were to upload a brain, who would you upload?

An idea suddenly springs to mind as I remember the appearance of one of the masks: a proud lion crowned with stag horns and surrounded by a mane of golden runes. When I felt the very soul of the mask peek through, it felt familiar. It felt like what I saw of the first shaman—all regal pride and clever accoutrements, masking a quiet love for his people. The idea storms my mind as I realize that each of the masks must have been made by previous magicians of the tribe.

I grab at the book desperately searching for a sign, and I flip the book onto its front cover to see that the strange symbols on its cover have a new member.

I see a strange rune that is somehow familiar; the image it shows just bleeds out into the world me. As if my very identity were a fire that radiates heat. I see 7 other runes, each radiating out pieces of who they are to their core, and my eyes fall upon the 4th rune, which has the same echoes of personhood that I found in that strange mask on the mysterious sea. I take them all in for the magnificent sight that they are, and I blink tears coming to my eye at the sheer beauty of the thing.

But I close my eyes and breathe in. Alright, let’s calm down before we move on. I instinctively look for my meditation room before stopping and remembering that it’s up there, surrounded by a bunch of fetid garbage, blue blood, and ant guts. I sigh, my mind still roiling from the shocks, before heading out of the small steel room I was in.

I step onto the ice, the strange field of slowness that erupts from the ice chilling my feet. I step on a thick coating of ice over a roiling sea of blood, and guts, the unique environment of a void leading to the strange meat planet I find myself on.

The view is disgusting, although, with the distance of a sheen of ice, I can admit that it does have a strange sense of beauty to it. And it does lead to a creature comfort that was robbed from me, one most don’t even dream of: gravity.

For even in the cheapest spaceship you could find still has an artificial gravity system. And although my stride is a bit strange due to the weak gravity, at the very least I can actually walk.

And the weak gravity does allow for a couple of neat tricks. I start to run, the distance between each of my steps turning it more into a strange skip as I tear free of the gravity as if my own body were turned into a spaceship.

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I woop in excitement as I exit the surface of my meat comet and drift in the "outer space" of it. With a smile on my face, I swim over to my former base, and through the door into nothingness, the empty space that is my meditation room.

I breathe in.

And I see beneath my eyelids a bedraggled bed of flowers, beset by weeds of pain and trouble. I take my tools, and I slowly straighten out the garden. Carefully removing the weeds so that they might not strangle the other thoughts. Watering the plants and adding new soil, rejuvenating my mind. Strand by strand, I fix the garden until it is perfect, I stand proud over a neat and orderly garden before it all collapses.

And then I breathe out. I stand up from my crisscross apple sauce position, although standing up is a bit of a misnomer; I do remain in place. If there was a floor, I would have clipped through like a glitching videogame character.

With calm marginally achieved, I swim back down to the meat meteor before letting gravity take over, with a light enough tug that my fall is gentle. I then walk over to my steel cube, a bare reminder of a base.

I walk in through the empty square of space that is my door, wishing that I could slam it closed, but sadly I don’t have the equipment required for such theatrics. Before sitting in my seat and grabbing the book.

I eagerly open its pages only to find that as I flip through, I see pages and pages of nothing, only reaching actual text once I hit the back third of the book. The pages are now different beyond the sudden removal of text, however.

Where pages previously just held one rune now below them the previously hidden text is revealed. The text below says the name of the rune, and what you can use the rune for, and curiously enough, I can see that there are many add-ons, especially from one style of handwriting. With some runes placed further back having fewer add-ons. Clearly, the book has been thoroughly perfected and smoothed by its continuous successors, with each adding their own runes and their own take on runes.

I sigh, realizing that most likely some of the best and most useful information I’m going to use is going to come from the twat who tried to kill me and, in his attempt, ruined centuries of art. The First Shaman, no matter how twatish, was however the most talented wizard to ever be born into this community. So I will most likely depend on his work to survive and grow in the future.

Anyway, I flip through the book, reaching for the incredibly complicated rune on its very last page the one that formerly was my hope for translation. And find that the page now stretches on for far past what is reasonable or even physically possible.

The page expanding in sight but not in size—a single page expanding into 5 and then 10, and then 50, and then hundreds of pages of entries all contained on one physical page—is a puzzling paradox to be sure. But I shrug my shoulders and start reading; it’s not the first time I’ve had to deal with those here, and it’s certainly not the last.

—

I read, "To all future inheritors, we pass down this history in our legacy so that no matter what, someone will hold this book. Our hearts will still live on. Do not be frustrated by the empty pages; you are at the very beginning of your journey and must take these first steps with care and not take the same exact steps as those before you. You will only have access to the dictionary and single runes at a time, but you will soon create your own grand artifacts, and once you take the steps of your very own journey, the other journeys will be free for you to peruse."

The text meanders a bit past that, but my blood seethes just a little bit due to one thing, everyone in their goddamn village knew enough magic to be burned at the stake! And from what I saw earlier, the candidates for shamanhood were usually hedge wizards who used passed-down runes from their families to create their own enchantments. So damn near everybody would know at the very least how to do them, but I have not been granted such courtesy. I keep reading, but my eyes just sort of skim the surface as I find myself drawn to the last entry.

—

Entry 7

Some might call me an arrogant twit, but I write this last entry in order to clear my name before the next member of the Jwarahausa retrieves our legacy from the astral. I am going to die of starvation very soon; the natural spell has already burned through all of my reserves of hunger. I no longer feel that deep pain, but I know that it is because the magic is burning away my ability to feel it. I have tried to negotiate with the nearby spirits for food, but they all run away from me. Scattering through the astral forest. The fucking lesser spirits—the ones who wouldn’t even dare to try to become gods—don't even approach me, scattering like rodents on a hunt. So I am writing down the events for posterity's sake as I shrivel away in the astral forest.

It all started when I courted the most beloved daughter of the body forger tribe; their community is less of a tribe however and more of a wandering mob of mercenaries always eager for a job. So I gave them one. The great-grandnephew of the First Shaman deserved to rise to the position of shaman, so I used them to propel me to the seat.

However, I was tricking them all along. Why would I deign to allow foreign influences into my court? So I blew them off and waited for their assault. The impending doom would allow me the power and support necessary to enact the power I deserved as the great-grandnephew of the First Shaman. Our line is what created the office of the shaman in the first place, so of course I shouldn’t have any obstacles in my path to power.

What do I care for councils and leaders that restrict my reach? So I started a war with the body forgers, knowing that the First Shamans' defense enchantments would pretty much instantly deal with my debts to them while also allowing me to keep the support as the triumphant leader. When the defenses were pierced, however, I knew that we must have been betrayed.

One of the mangy hedge wizards must have betrayed the weaknesses of our defenses. Most likely the old kook, who kept on spitting at the very idea of my being in charge. Thankfully, I had the grandest artifact of my ancestor on me: the Astral Bangle, an item that both holds infinite magic to burn in recharging enchantments and the ability to teleport the user to the Astral Forest.

Seeing the impending fall of the city at the hands of the body forgers, I knew that I couldn’t leave them the legacy of our tribe. So I gathered all the most powerful artifacts, our legacy in the form of this book, and leaped into the astral forest.

It was fine for a while, if eerie due to the constant sphere of grey fog that I found myself surrounded by. But when I walked over to the reflection of the plains to the south of our glorious city, the Astral Bangle wouldn’t take me back.

So now I lie here at the foot of the trees of the Astral Forest. I'm dying alone, my body far away from everyone I’ve ever known. I don’t regret my choices, the ones that brought me here it’s too late for that. But there are some things I regret. Namely the lack of love in this life. It was all about power, from birth until death, and I wish nothing more than to say goodbye to the ones I could have loved. So goodbye, and if you read this entry, please give this body to my mother, Joto Basketweaver, or any of my family if they still live. Although I doubt it, women never fare well in raids.

I’m sorry.

—

I stare at the pages of the book. The situation I saw when I first saw the temple is finally explained. The politicking shaman about whom I heard so many complaints apparently brought the tribe to ruin before running the fuck away.

I spit out the window in my distaste for the man. I don’t care for your regret for what a goddamn coward was he! You drive your own community to ruin, and then you split and run. Unwilling to even deal with the consequences of his actions. It’s people like him that make me glad that humanity is no longer ruled by humanity. Good riddance, although I’m still not sure what killed them.

And despite his general twatiness at the very least, he gave me something. He added a quill to the hat of the illusory world theory. Because he apparently viewed the astral expanse as some type of forest with accompanying trees. Eh either way, it’s not really relevant or useful by itself, but it might help with something else.

Sitting back down after my little internal dialogue, I take out my infinite notebook and start thinking about what I want to do with these enchantments.

I could make a heat beam item to match the ice plate, but well, I already have a laser, and what’s the point of carrying around two items that can generate highly focused beams of heat? Ugh, I can’t think of anything; it’s not exactly like I’ve ever needed to know on the spot which fantastical items I want most. And the items that I could think of on the spot are mostly weapons.

And I’m not exactly swimming in a need for Mjolnir, Brisingr, or any other magical weapon for that matter. Hell, even if I could have diced those golems to pieces, the problem wasn’t them but the incredibly intelligent avalanche.

Alright, if I can’t think of anything, what are the enchantments I’ve already seen? A golem would benefit me greatly, essentially being an AI made of rocks instead of photons. Frankly, I suspect that the rock avalanche that nearly killed me was a golem, and frankly, that golem made a well-thought-out, almost perfect decision damn near instantly.

So I write down:

.

Enchantment Projects:

A helper for increased automation and convenience.

.

Another thing that I could use help with is mobility; when I invoke wanderlust to fly in any direction I please, I can’t cast any other spells. This means that what usually happens is that once I stop, I barrel forward in a straight line while casting another spell.

It was incredibly annoying to slowly freeze the surface of the planet with the Shiver technique, one pass at a time. And it wouldn’t have even worked if I hadn’t figured out the trick to narrowing down large AOE techniques.

So yeah, a mobility enchantment would be really useful. Maybe something that propels me by blasting me, like rocket shoes or an ion blaster. I already know that magic can create temporary gouts of material because of the floor trap room.

.

Enchantment Projects:

A helper for increased automation, and convenience.

Mobility armour.

.

But thinking about the Iron Man suit makes me think of something else: armor. Despite being admittedly pretty bad at violence, there have been several threats to my life and safety so far. And the obvious solution to that is to suit up in some type of armor.

Plus, I already know that shields are also possible through the floor trap room. The way out was blocked by a shitton of shields, and that door was durable as all hell. And while shields might be too complicated right now, I think that a durability enchantment should be right up my alley.

And when I think about it, a durability enchantment is exactly what I need, or well needed. Because if my base had a durability enchantment, I could have just stayed in my room and laughed as ant corpses hilariously slid against my practically impervious base. With a shield, I could have held back the stones without nearly freezing myself to death.

I stare at the floor of this tiny, shitty room, and I start to seethe. Because I deserve more than this; I already earned more than this, it was just torn from me. And I refuse to let my work be torn to pieces again. I won't allow the world to destroy my hopes and dreams. With my strength, I will stand against it all.