I unpeel the ruin to find everything. I get assaulted by the exact dimensions of the building, the story of the microbes who lived and died on its surface, and the journey it made from rock to building. I grit my teeth as I witness a mass of knowledge that extends past the horizon. I grit my teeth and use my experience dealing with magic bullshit to mangle the information flowing into my brain. I twist it until it forms a stream of images, and it all suddenly clicks into place.

I open my eyes and find myself looking from above as a community slowly pushes large rocks into a pile. I seem to find myself in eastern Africa, thousands of years past my time, but as I ponder my circumstances.

A man comes into view, his ebony skin covered in strange tattoos, carrying a pristine book, raising his arms up high whispering unfamiliar words as his tattoos shine. All of the energy gathered leading to a crescendo and a flash of light.

And as the light fades all the stones gain an array of runes and rise into the air, the sound like a rockslide in slow motion.

Arranging itself into a golem, a monstrous creature formed with buildings worth of stone. It roars from a stone throat, majestic, and beautiful. But as I anticipate further action, the monster doesn’t do anything except fall into place. Going into a sleeping position in the rough shape of a grand ziggurat.

But the strange magical feat didn’t mean that the work was done, from my gaze from above I saw countless days pass as the people worked on the inside of the piled stone, turning it into a grand structure, with drawings, runes, blood, sweat, and tears poured into the structure.

And once it’s done, I see the tattooed man again, he slowly clambers atop the pyramid climbing all of the steps laboriously, the project taking years of his life. He pulls out a hunk of gold ore, whispers some words into it, and slams the piece of gold into the top,

His people jump back at the foot of the mountain, as the gold expands, and flows like he summoned a wave of molten gold. White light emanates from the ziggurat as it is covered in a blindingly bright layer of gold.

And all the people below sink down in prayer, but the man just seems tired slowly clambering down.

After that time seems to speed up. I see the Ziggurat used for everything to from daily community gatherings, to seasonal rituals.

I see a city get born from around the structure that towers above everything else. I see love, blood, fueds, and cries of sadness from above.

I see the city grow larger, and develop a unique culture of it’s own one that values art, and expression led by generations of magic users. As the city becomes grander and larger I suddenly see a boom of invention, the city expanding greatly.

The same golden covering gilding the ziggurat, spreads throughout the entire city, as the city gets slowly covered in more and more runes, fixing small problems, bringing in water, and helping mothers through childbirth. Until even the poorest peasant in the city lived a better life than a king outside of it.

But as the city existed, and bursted, it also fell. I see people grow used to the items around them only slowly adding to them, while they stagnate. No longer any more grand bursts of invention simply content to stay where they are.

I see the temple get visited more and more as tensions rise in the community, before I see something on the horizon, an incoming army.

It swarms over the city nestled around the massive ziggurat and tears it into shreds. Ripping the gold off the walls, and pillaging the items, taking away the people as slaves.

But one man refuses to submit, he hides, and waits for the swarm to go away, and sneaks into the ziggurat. The outside now a dull grey, and frantically writes with his own blood a certain symbol that just emanates the truth and grand power of the Astral Plane, and with a crash of stone it teleports here.

And it drifts for an impossibly long amount of time.

As I see the entire history of the ziggurat in front of me, my eyes roll back, and after the flow is done I collapse

—

I rub my head the pain echoing from the side of my head, the mind almost filled to bursting by the painstaking detail of the entire history of the ziggurat. From when it was just a bunch of massive rocks, to the center of a massive civilization, to being torn apart by a neighbor for its wealth.

“Fuck me did I just get the life cycle of a rock jammed in my brain,” I said rubbing my head, the pain overtaking my entire brain.

I slump or well try to there is no ground to fall on, but I make my best attempt to float with ease in the astral soup. As I try to grapple with this new information.

For what is my unpeeling? I’ve been using its abilities to learn about the emotions behind the clouds almost imagining that I was seeing behind their skin, but it seems to be something more.

From what I’ve just seen I think I can scry objects, maybe even people. But well it’s not like I have any people to try the idea out.

Either way, if my hypothesis is true I can look at the information of things with the unpeeling technique. This could be incredibly useful in the future especially since there seems to be so much information that I was missing with my earlier attempts.

Since I had to essentially pick the scene in order to not have my brain exploded by all the possible information about the structure.

Hmm, a good future experiment could be out me attempting to unpeel a cloud and look at its history, there are many things that I could discover just by seeing it from birth till death. There must be so much I’ve missed by only seeing a tiny slice of them.

But first I should investigate this temple. Because well somehow their prayers actually did shit. The various magicians who apparently existed in the past, used a lot of rituals and prayers to do actual magic!

It’s obviously possible I do magic myself, and my expectations theory means that if you think your prayers do magic it should be possible to do so. But if that’s the case and you don’t need to be in the Astral Plane to cast spells, where’s modern magic?

Because the last magician managed to make this ruin appear in the astral, and that is decisively something a portal can do as shown by me.

But if the magician used magic to do it how the hell do modern humans do it?

We don’t exactly have state-sanctioned wizards running around waving wands at the portals. So are portals enchanted objects?

But if they’re enchanted why don’t we use any other ones in our day-to-day lives, the warm and caring government of humanity would never do such a thing as make our lives worse by taking away knowledge.

Each and every human has an A.I that has practically all of human knowledge pre-mind injection data storage.

And that’s because you can’t just allow regular people off the street to be allowed to extract and inject memories.

You might not be able to learn any skills with it, but you could drastically alter your personality. Your being is made up of your experiences and how you interpret them, if you add new experiences artificially you will absorb them through their lens.

I shake my head in the end, I’m definitely going in there, this ruined temple was the site of a ridiculous amount of magical phenomena, and generations of magicians imbued it with what seems to be a ridiculous amount of magic.

Who knows what I could scavenge from this site, it might have been mostly torn apart but that last magician teleported it into the Astral. This means that there is at least a way to use magic to transport objects into the astral.

Which hopefully also means that magic could be used to exit the astral, and this temple could show me the way.

So with hungry eyes, I swim toward the temple

—

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As I approach the temple, I see that despite all the gold being stripped from the temple, the drawing that I saw form, and fade with my sky high eyes are still there, to tell their story.

A story told over generations of work, innovation, and stagnation. I walk in, the stone interior looking less polished but more worn by the sheer weight of people. I smile admiring the art inside as I walk forward, one great thing about the city born from this temple was that everyone was able to express themselves.

From the simplest laborer to the richest son, anyone could read, write, and create a story using the temple as their canvas. Although only the most magnificent or relevant works got to be on the outside.

I sigh my hands trailing the walls, I wish I could read it but despite the fascinating beauty that is tantalizingly in front of me. I came here not to admire the art but to loot the place of whatever leftover goods it has.

I stop floating in the middle of a hallway built by a people long dead and look at my hands.

“Goddamn am I an asshat, I’m acting like those losers who rob the graves of foreign peoples,” I said

I wrench my hands away from my eyes, and gesture as if to wipe them off, because at the end of the day despite my whining I’m not going to stop.

I ball my hands into fists because I am going to get home and nothing will stop me, plus I don’t even know the language so what’s the point of staring at swimming text?

But as I relax my muscles and let the fist fall into a hand I remember something, one I am most likely the best linguist to ever exist, coupled with the magical ability to speed read.

And two, I discovered like 5 minutes ago that I could use my unpeeling technique for more than just clouds.

With a half-hearted bonk to my head and a chuckle I squint, and unpeel the text to reveal a storm of information. But with my prior knowledge, I manage to focus the storm invading my mind and drag myself into a scene.

—

I bang my chisel into the rock of the old temple, the dink of the blows soothing my ears, I doubt my work will be chosen to stay, but still, I can give my protests here. And frankly, I need to express it somehow, our Shaman is a fucking TWAT!

He can barely cast any magic and that’s his entire job! He provides for the tribe by using his magic to problem solve, and he only causes them. The only spirit that would gift him his magic is whatever spirit is in charge of scheming and buffoonery!

And since he holds the spellbook of our tribe, the people who are actually talented can’t gain our heritage and are thus forced to do a lot more work with worse spells, burning their souls in an effort to keep our community alive.

He’s an utter disgrace to the title of Shaman, despite giving up his name as all shamans do when they inherit their spellbook he constantly uses the fact that he descended from the First Shaman in order to weasel his way into and out of situations.

All he’s good for is politicking and schemes! AUGH, I stop as I hear the soothing ting start to turn to a scrape. Great now I’m going to need to redo this, Ugh I better get to it, I’m not letting my voice be silenced.

—

I shake my head, my eyes drifting away from that man’s gaze the feeling like taking off a VR headset. I instinctively hold my head but no pain comes, I guess as long as I don’t go overboard I should be fine?

But as I ponder that, I shiver, because well I’m not doing that again. Crawling into someone’s brain feels wrong. It’s way worse than mind injections because it doesn’t feel like those have been your memories all along but rather like you scooped out a bit of someone's brain and shoved it into yours.

I need to find a better method than that. It seems like I can steer it a bit from how I managed to see a scene both times, I just need to go in the direction of some text instead. I shake in place before moving on.

I keep on walking through the snaking halls my journey dotted with some paintings, and poems, with strange smudges along the walls, as if the walls were a painting that was scrubbed clean.

Eventually coming to a crossroads, I see at the center of the room a statue with a man his skin writhing with the same text on the walls offering a hand to a cowering child.

The man’s skin an unpainted grey stone highlights the chiseled lines of text, while the child is drawn in excruciating life-like detail. His skin was painted a warm brown his hair, not a block of stone but individual strands of hair painstakingly carved into place.

But as I look further into the eyes of the child, I realize something this looks like a younger version of the man who built this temple. His curly hair matting into a series of dreadlocks, that the older man I saw at the beginning grew until it covered his eyes.

Intrigued I unpeel the object, and retrieve a piece of text from the sea of information, one that’s surprisingly small and cryptic.

‘When the great spirit of language gifted us the magic of the Astral Plane’

My eyes flutter easily dealing with the small amount of information. But I still need time to process the idea itself, because is this temple dedicated to spirits?

I remember in my last experience the man mentioned spirits associated with magic. Something about specific spirits gifting magics.

But although I can see it, and predict how it happened I’m vaguely baffled. Do they really worship the clouds? It makes a kind of sense, humans have worshipped mountains, lakes, and skies for millennia.

And the clouds are a sight to behold, magnificent beacons of complex emotions. But in the end, they are as sentient as a rock. A rock formed of human thought and emotion but a rock nonetheless.

Well, it’s not like it’s my religion, none of my business what people worship, but how did the guy get gifted magic by the cloud?

How did the man even see the writhing spills of text on the cloud of language from the other side? I ball my fists together I need to know this.

With determination in my eyes, I unpeel the statue again only to find nothing. As if my search hit a metaphysical brick wall.

What the hell is going on, when I went cloud gazing I repeatedly unpeeled clouds always learning something that was just a bit different from the original. But now I’m getting cockblocked by a hunk of stone?

I stare at the statue my efforts leading to nothing, the frustration building as I attempt to wrestle more information free of the stone. Why can’t I squeeze any more information out?

I try innumerable methods to try to get more information out of the damnable statue but it all leads to nothing. I throw my arms behind me as I decide right then and there to give up.

I move on in search of more information and the inner sanctum. Because if the magician bothered to take the temple away from the hands of the enemy it probably has something valuable inside.

I rub my hands together in anticipation of the prize, and randomly choose the right side of the crossroads, with no clues I have no choice but to guess. So with full confidence, I press onwards.

Hungry for more information I unpeel many paintings, and pieces of text only to get not much of anything. I discover that the earlier trait of no second peeks holds true but otherwise I don’t learn anything important.

I witness countless birthdays and funerals, marriages, and births. This time always viewing the scene with only one chance I can’t read only a tiny line of text.

Although frankly throughout my studies, I am astonished at the quality of life. The various enchantments mean that frankly, the vast majority lived far better lives than some medieval kings.

A common enchantment is one that produces clean fresh water once a day, something that essentially throws problems of thirst, and many diseases, completely out the window.

There are dozens of similar extremely practical and convenient enchantments some made by individuals who passed down certain runes that they learned in their bid for an apprenticeship to the Shaman.

However, most are made by Shamans who tirelessly work to make sure their community thrives. I witness that for some reason those who use magic seem to burn something? I’m not sure what it is, the community refers to it as soul burn but I’ve never felt such a sensation.

And also curiously enough the artifacts are recharged weekly by a ritual where they touch a bracelet, my bracelet. Although admittedly my bracelet lost its subtle light when I ate the cloud of language.

It seems like the enchantments were powered by something inside the bracelet. Oh well, guess I shouldn’t have left it at the base. Presumably, it’s been crushed to pieces by the army of ant corpses. So it’s of no use to me to study now.

I continue walking forward snaking through the former golem-turned-temple to the spirits. Eventually reaching another splitting point but this time I have a bit more clues on what to do next. The right side of the tunnel is far more weathered than the left.

But also in the middle, there is another statue this time surrounded by the city post-boom, with a cocky triumphant smile on his face as he stands above his work. I’ve seen his visage in a lot of paintings, he seems to be referred to as the First Shaman, which is very confusing considering he seems to be the 3rd or 4th magician.

Eager to understand more of the puzzling situation I unpeel the statue, and grasp a scene with my mind.

—

I chisel away at the stone, slowly revealing the most admired figure in our community, he First Shaman.

I sigh setting my tools down on a floating stone slab. He was a true genius, his gifted spells were passed down in the spellbook, the personal inventor of many of the standard enchantments that we still use even today.

His mastery of language magic was unmatched and so was his wit. He was a master negotiator able to play off neighboring powers each other while backing his idealogy through enchanted items. Any attempt to destroy him only allowed him to gift his enemies a new scar.

But the bravest, and most admirable thing he did was free us from the tyranny of spirits.

Trapping the great spirit in his bangle, when he went on a merry trip off the astral negotiating grander and better spells from spirits in exchange for defeating the spirit of language.

He is the cause of our success and the artifacts and knowledge he passed on is what allowed us to be one of the great powers of the area.

He deserves to live in stone forever, I’m glad that I was chosen to do this, for it is an honor to carve into the world our history.

—

I blink my eyes adjusting once again to my own brain. Burdened more by immense confusion.

Because how the fuck did he negotiate spells from a bunch of clouds? Even my illusory theory can’t accommodate this, he can’t exactly negotiate with a pile of emotions!

But if that’s not the case what is the truth?

Maybe he’s just gotten mythologized, I know that the people here worshipped the clouds scattered throughout the astral, and that they believe that their magic was a gift from those clouds.

So if he came back from the astral with a bunch of new techniques to people could reason that he gained the spells by talking to the spirits. But that doesn’t explain everything my hands flexing in and out as I attempt to deal with the rag boiling over.

Eventually, I calm down, I need to know more about this in order to get the hell out of here. I choose the more weathered hallway, the First Shaman was an incredibly popular figure to create art about so if I go to the more popular section undoubtedly I’ll find out more about him.

I pass through but strangely enough, I see no more artworks beyond this point the walls are nearly all smudged away. As if someone took their hand and dragged it over a wet painting.

I frown but continue swimming at the very least it’s a change to the monotony as I swim forward until I come across quite a strange room.

The floor is covered in strange tiles with runes all over them, one prominent rune in the center tied into a bunch of auxiliary runes. The tiles are arranged in some sort of pattern with at the very end of this long hallway being a door completely decked out in runes.

I look down at the floor, and whistle damn am I glad that I don’t have to walk here. With some trepidation, I slowly swim over to the door and scry it. Maybe I can figure out what’s going on if I can peek into the thoughts of the creator.

But as I attempt to peer into the information behind the curtain, I see nothing only hearing an incredibly loud, incredibly grating voice echo out in my mind.

“OY YOU IDIOT SHAMAN ARE YOU AN IDIOT, DID YOU REALLY THINK YOU COULD GET PAST MY SECURITY JUST BY SCRYING IT? YOU’VE BEEN DEALING WITH IDIOTS TOO MUCH, BECAUSE FRANKLY HOW THE WOULD YOU THINK YOU COULD WALK INTO MY INNER SANCTUM. USING YOU KNOW THE SPELL LITERALLY EVERYONE GETS FOR FREE, DUMBASS!” the disembodied voice echoed in my head smugly, with pride infusing it completely.

As I grip my head in pain, I see panes of protective shields erupt around the entrance, walls, and door. As if the metal panes of a store in case of an emergency.

And I realize fuck I’m stuck in a room filled with enough magical munitions to blow me sky high.