AUUUGH!" I groan, my mind feeling like someone took the nearest cheese grater and turned it into nothing but shreds.

Rubbing my head, I look around me only to see nothing but piles upon piles of iron plates. I groan again, not from my brain but from the jabbing sharp edges of the iron plates digging into my back.

Wincing all the way, I slowly clamber up, having to deal with the unsteady surface that is just a bunch of iron plates thrown this way and that. But eventually, I get up and hobble back to the table.

Rubbing my lower back I sit down and am quite delighted to be greeted by the sight of my work. Headache almost, almost forgotten, I squeal with delight as I grab the plate and hold it up to my eyes. Seeing the three runes I managed to make before I conked out.

First there is the set of simplified round glasses commonly found in all of them, but in the center of the first there is a bloom. Infused into the very ideas of the enchantment is the orange emotion of Hidden Beauty. Which frankly, was not the intention, but this is magic, there’s bound to be some fucky wucky shit.

Then, seeing the other rune, its lenses filled a strange jagged question mark. Left off kilter, not aligned with the rest of the glasses, I can feel the power born of Oddity. Not of one that seeks to fix oddity but one fascinated by it.

Next I see the final rune, and I scratch my head because, inside the depths of the runic glasses, is the image of a piece of paper. And unlike the others, I can’t guess at its usage, but hey, that’s what testing is for.

I grab the plate and wedge it into the crook of my arm before bouncing over to my forge. A sturdy design of hot steel, enumerable enchantments, and dozens of little hammers perfect for any occasion. Or at the very least any occasion I’ve dealt with so far.

Stepping inside, I quickly grab a handful of iron dust. I have been using iron so far due to its greater ease in engraving and its far lower melting point. Despite steel being a far better option.

Because when I tried to use steel as my main metal, many questions came to mind. For example, if I can melt steel, wouldn’t I also melt the stuff that’s melting the steel? And how would I differentiate the two metals when they are in a mold? While I do have a small supply of steel tools, for most purposes, iron is far easier to work with, and thus better.

But rather than discussing the pros and cons of my various metals, I should actually get something done.

So I start by grabbing a pair of insulating gloves and putting them on before stuffing the steel dust into an ingot mold, then quickly tossing them into the forge.

I wait until the metal has melted into a liquid before grabbing the mold with a pair of tongs and taking it out of the tube-shaped forge.

Then I wait again for the metal to cool down, for sadly the vast majority of forging is waiting and moving around metal.

And once the metal is cherry red but solid, I take a special tool and slap the ingot out of the mold and onto my anvil. Made of hammered-together steel nails melted together with my heatbeam.

Grabbing a large hammer off of a hook embedded in the wall of the smithy. I hammer the metal until it is nice and flat, and thin, before slowly hammering it longer and longer until it’s around a forearm and a half long.

And then, grabbing the metal with my tongs, I flip it so that the edge meets the anvil's surface and hammer the metal until it folds into itself, becoming a little bit thicker. I repeat this process until it’s about as thick as a computer cable, in a wobbly band around half a finger deep, and a finger wide.

Grabbing a piece of steel in the rough cut out of my head, I wind the steel band around the cut out, until the two ends meet. Noticing that the band was a bit too long, I hammer the ends together and then hammer the top of the bands until they are uniform in width.

Standing back and admiring my work with a nod, my hair moving forward with my head almost leading to disaster before I hastily grabbing my curly hair and put it back where it belongs. I sigh, having saved my beautiful, beautiful hair from a gruesome death by fire. And with that crisis solved I pop the metal band out of the cutout grab it with my tongs and dunk it with a hiss into a barrel of water.

Tapping my foot, I wait until it’s cool enough to handle before grabbing it with my hands, and then carefully scratching in the runes into the little steel crown. I had thought of making glasses, but the design was so annoying when I thought about it that I decided to go with a flatter crown. Way easier to wear, enchant, and as a bonus I get to wear a goddamn crown!

But I must get back to my work so squinting quite intently, I grab my smallest styles and carefully scratch onto the front of the crown 3 Button/Switch runes. The frontmost one on the right side leading to the mystery rune; the next leading to the Oddity Rune, and the last leading to the Beauty rune. Allowing me to easily tap between different modes of sight.

And as a last bonus, I slap on a self-healing enchantment so that it doesn’t get screwed up, before putting it on. I pull the steel band onto my head, my long, curly hair compressing against my skull until it makes a nice fit. It isn’t perfect; one side of the band bends a little bit into my head, but it’ll be good enough.

I tap on the last rune, and suddenly, when I see my hands, I don’t just see my beautiful ebony skin; I can see the bones underneath, a rolling series of intricate ivory pieces attached to a dazzling array of muscles. I move my hands, but as I do so, the illusion breaks, and I instead see all the little flaws in my forge walls forming the pattern of a snowflake, none of them buffed out by a self-repair enchantment.

I quickly flutter my eyes closed before turning off the enchantment. It seems that the enchantment essentially allows me to visually see details as long as they are beautiful to me. Quite interesting, it could be useful for looking at the mechanics behind an item. I could see what’s behind a box by finding it fascinating and whatnot. Although I will have to be careful the state seems to be a bit delicate.

Next, I press the Oddity button, and all around me, I see little objects highlighted, like a video game perk that allows you to see all the ammo caches, except I instead see what is off. The hammer hook that was placed a bit lower than all the others or the one enchantment inside my forge that’s a little bigger than all the others. But I can't see the oddity for its flaws but for its beauty: the mismatched hammer flowing into the image of a wave falling onto the water, the slightly larger enchantment forming a strange pattern with it at its center.

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Hmm, this is obviously powerful. All the little bits of oddity allow me to see any flaws or anything out of place. Allowing me to have powerful investigative capabilities through this enchantment. But strangely enough, it doesn't seem to like me seeing the flaws, pushing my thoughts away from the more practical approaches to this. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to learn how to push through it.

With that done, I tap it off and press the final button, and before my eyes, dozens of panels of text unfold. Any gaze at anything from the pair of tangs to an enchantment brings up a bit about its dimensions, weathering, and a whole bunch of other random bits of information. As if the world seeks to teach me everything about the most mundane of items.

Ugh, I turn it off. The information overwhelming. I rub my eyes; it looks like it would be very useful considering that it seems like a limited form of scrying. It feels a lot like accessing the the sea of knowledge, yet it doesn’t pull out a scene but rather all the other random bits that I usually can’t process.

Not that I can process this either, I think. Well, it might get better over time, although it does make me wonder what happens if I try to combine them. I gingerly activate all three enchantments before immediately wincing.

My eyes dart from flaw to flaw, my entire vision covered in text as my eyes highlighted random bits of information. All of it oh so bright, and oh so overwhelming that I JUST CAN’T TAKE IT!

UGH, I quickly close my eyes. My previous headache worsening as another comes in. I quickly tap all the runes off. Before rubbing my head and inadvertently turning the enchantments back on. I swiftly turn them off again, but I groan realizing that it is going to take a bit to get used to these new methods of sight.

But it looks like I’ve got the equipment I need; I just have to grab some things before I head out. So I speed towards my base and my extravagant, weird magical artifacts.

—

Done with my creations, I stumble through the base steadily, filling my backpack with nails, cloth, dust, my infinite binder, my duplicator, my infinite notebook, and all the other such things I usually bring.

And in this autopilot state, I find myself holding a spoon, and I cannot let go of it, nor can I stop looking at it.

For it is a murder weapon. I can dodge and run around the problem all I want, but I cannot deny that I murdered a sentient being with a fucking spoon.

My heart beats fast in my chest, yet I do not breathe in; I just stare at the cursed thing.

My eyes water as they strain to remain open, but I ignore the sensation; it’s only right that I should feel just a little pain for what I did.

My mind swirls in a useless eddy, thinking of excuses yet discarding them before I could even take any comfort in their lies.

Disgust spreads throughout it all like ink in water, my mind rising up in despair and hatred, yet there is nowhere to put it.

So with my eyes bloodshot from staring at this petty, useless thing, I crumple the iron into pieces. Disregarding the sharp thorns of iron, leaving furrows in my skin.

For I refuse to leave this horrible thing on any part of this plane, I refuse to have anything to do with this at all, I refuse

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I huff and puff, staring at my ruined hands and the crumpled ball of metal, and I toss it into the astral expanse hatred still clouding my thoughts as I walk away, tears stuck in my eyes.

—

I frantically shake away tears, the astral expanses dreadful lack of gravity making them stick to my eyes, as I head to the junk rooms, looking for something, anything I can actually do.

Because staring at my own mistakes won’t help. But maybe trying to move past them will. And I can think of one way to do that: by not trying to fight the spirit of Mystery.

And well, I do have one thing that is bound to be pretty rare: enchantments. And I doubt anyone will be copying them anytime soon; I essentially stared at the book containing the central tenants of how to make them for weeks and gained nothing. And because of my mistake, I have many gifts in the realm of language magic, instively understanding many things. If I couldn't get it without help, no one could, at least not without also being extraordinarily gifted.

So I have a pretty ginormous lever to pull and affect the spirit, but for me to have any credible things, I’m going to need some proof, and I have one resource that I can easily mass produce that is pretty goddamn fantastic.

The self-healing plates! And if they want to actually have them be useful, they’ll need me to activate and install them. Because if the enchantment is activated, any attempt to attach or alter the material gets violently stopped.

So they will need me for any use they make of me, allowing me to get close and talk more. Using the tea party, I can get the spirit of curdled anger to essentially introduce me to him as partners. And then I would negotiate using my enchantments for the release of the captives.

But I’m going to need some backups, and some offerings to get to the point where I can actually do that, so what do I have to offer to a spirit of mystery.

Obviously there is mystery itself, but I’m not willing to tear bits of myself out for favors like that shaman guy. I shiver in fear and disgust at the very idea before continuing my thread of thought. But do I need to give him the idea, or is it just a mystery?

Because I think with a smile on my face, I certainly have a lot of mysteries, including one that has a physical form.

I sweep through the astral expanse, tugging at the technique of windwaving so that I might feel the mysterious fluid I float in. Before grasping my shoulders and freezing solid a chunk of it with my Shiver technique.

I grab at it, thinking that this will serve as a good foot in the door gift, but I may need something other than these two in case of an emergency.

I tap at my chin, floating among the corridors of my base, my hair sprawling out in its glorious curls. Thinking of various items I have with a large stockpile before coming to an idea.

"My wands, I have a crap ton of them everywhere that I have no real use for," I say.

But even as I say the words, doubt starts to creep in as I come across one fact: I’m not going to become an astral arms dealer.

I don’t wish to be personally responsible for the deaths of orphans, but that doesn’t necessarily ruin my wand idea however. For didn’t I just make a nonlethal wand?

So all I have to do is show it off, and then mass produce a weaker version later. But in the end, for all this talk of negotiation, I can’t seem weak, which is why I’m bringing the big guns along.

—

For there is one last thing I need that I’m definitely not leaving behind. The armor that I slaved over for weeks, and I must say it is truly magnificent.

Made out of super-dense iron plates, it is a series of thin yet extremely theoretically heavy plates, with scale armor in between them, making it look like I am stuck in a decorated boiler. The helmet is attached to the round breastplate with a generous slit for the eyes made possible by shaved, clear mystic ice.

All decorated with little designs on the ends and, of course, enchantments, oh so, oh so many enchantments.

On the inner part of the back of the chest plate there is pasted a gigantic rune of healing made as large as possible, nearly reaching the edges of the plate. But it’s not to repair the armor; no, no, no, it’s to repair me.

The thing is, if someone made a healing enchantment, I doubt that they made it to repair metal. So when put to its real purpose and made as powerful as possible, I don’t doubt that my body will soon be fixed as fast as my ship!

But that’s not even close to the really interesting parts of the armor; a better look would be at the gauntlets and boots.

For on the boots, there is a little switch attached to the bottom of my boot that I can move with my toes, which is actually, funnily enough, a pretty standard blaster enchantment.

It just sends out a continuous stream of rock with great force. But considering that they are on my feet, and that each and every force has an equal and opposite reaction. The souped-up blaster wands can essentially be used like rocket boots!

Since it’s essentially the same idea but replacing the jet fuel for an infinite supply of rocks, due to me not wanting to roast anything that I approach but in a pinch the boots can be used as an emergency blaster wand.

Turning me into a discount magic Iron Man in magic space. Able to blast my way through the cosmos in my literal iron suit. I laugh because, strangely enough, the Iron Man suit hasn't been made of iron for decades, but I get back to the discussion.

Additionally, my innovative design is not done yet for the gauntlet’s hold blasters! I made it so that on the side of the gauntlet there is a Button/Switch rune that activates on the right side. An extremely concentrated heat beam courtesy of a modified heat-aura technique. And on the left, the gauntlet generates at a simple touch a stream of cold so solid that the entire line of the aura is more like waving around a slab of ice.

But best of all, along the entire outside of the armor, is an intricate set of absorption runes. Because the thing is, if the runes that power the charging essentially receive Energy like any and all energy, so much so that the recomended way to use physical energy to recharge an enchantment is to use lightning bolts.

Then wouldn’t that be some of the best armor around, an armor that would absorb any attack to power the similarly gigantic battery that all the other enchantments are powered by?

It’s a bit of a glass cannon considering that I couldn’t fit any metal healing enchantments due to me needing to place them on each individual piece of metal, but does that really matter when your armor literally EATS the attacks of your enemies.

I smile, the expression hidden by the black iron of my helmet—solid, protected. I feel invincible in this armor, and I hope to prove it true.

So with a flip of my hair through the empty back of my helmet, I flip the switch on the inside of my boots, blast off the meat planet, and head out so that no one shall suffer as I have.