I first stared at the precious book stubbornly attached to the corpse before trying to pry the fingers off the corpse, and oh, so many other things, but nothing I did worked. Before I think, "Why the hell do I need it right now?" I need to read it! So I rapidlyshite flip the book open only to realize... that I can’t read any of it for shit!

I sigh—it might be a sad and frustrating experience given how hard I worked for this book, but that’s understandable. It is a book of mystical runes that ended up in the Astral for who knows what reason. I doubt whoever wrote the book knew English, so I’m double-screwed on that front.

Well, if I can’t read the book, I might as well take a look at the corpse attached to it. The corpse is nothing but bones and sinew, making it quite ridiculous that it’s holding on to the book so tightly. When people say "death grip," they mean it!

I take a closer look, and they’re wearing a robe like the first skeleton but in a different style that's much more ostentatious. The dyes are more beautiful, and the patterns seem expertly done, enhanced by little runes EVERYWHERE on the robes. I take a swim backward for a second.

“Goddamn enchantment has to cost something. I refuse to believe that the conservation of energy isn’t a constant! It offends my modern sensibilities. I spit in the face of such stupidity! Anyway, whoever made this sure spent a lot." I exclaimed while looking at the robes again with a side-eye.

I push it away. There's no way I’m putting on a magical item without knowing what it does. For all I know, it has security measures that liquefy anyone who even dares get near and isn’t their owner.

Also, the guy is decked out in jewelry that is also adorned with runes. Most interestingly, they wear a band on their wrist absolutely packed with tiny runes and a jewel that swirls within a gray inner storm.

If I can decipher this book, I can figure out what they do by translating the runes.

Well, that’s for a later time. I need to head back home, so I stuff his body into my pack.

But as I pack away the dead man's things into my pack, I notice something interesting: the cloud moves along with the corpse as if it were affixed to its position. When I turn right, so does the cloud.

Well, this stinks. I can’t leave here if the cloud moves with me. I frown and reason that it probably isn’t everything that the cloud is attached to. Therefore, if I move the items one at a time, I can find what I need to abandon to get out of here. I groan because I sure hope it isn’t the book.

I first take the corpse out of the book pack and then remove all the items from the body while carefully observing the cloud around me. I try to see if it moved, but if it did, it’s too small for me to tell. So to be more thorough, I grab the bundle of bones and swim back and forth, the cloud not shifting around me. Then I move the robes to nothing as well. I’m getting a bit nervous, so I move the book up in the queue.

I move the book around only to be delighted that the cloud doesn’t shift according to its position, so it has to be something else. I then grab the jewelry with the densest runes, the bangle, since my theory is that maybe something with so much magic is the reason for the strangeness. So I grab the bangle and swim forward, only for the cloud to follow me as if I were at the center of its universe. Interesting; maybe it has something to do with that swirl of gray in the center of the bangle.

I pull my infinite notebook out to write down my findings, only to burn with fear, anger, and confusion. I can’t read a single word of my piles of research.

I breathe in and out like my lungs were transformed into the bellows of a forge. I can feel my skin, and it feels tight. My eyes turn over extremely fast, and my mind speeds along a track. Only to come to the same conclusions. I hold my head but I can’t speak. I want to scream but it doesn’t come out.

Did I forget my words as well?

How did I forget how to read anyway?

It has to be in the cloud, but how do I get it back? I can't escape the astral plane while being illiterate!

I get my research from Stevens’ database by reading!

I certainly haven’t memorized the whole of scientific knowledge prior to mind injection, as Stevens has. I groan. I wish he was here so he could reassure me and tell me it’s going to be alright, even when I knew he was lying. Or tell me some weird fact about the human psyche to draw me out of my funk.

Maybe even with his advice, I wouldn’t have done the stupid shit that led me here. I chuckle because frankly, when he was around, I just plugged along ignoring him because frankly, it’s really annoying to get perfect advice, like, "Oh, I can eat chocolate when I’m freaking out, and it’ll be better really! I roll my eyes thinking about that moment. Like, thank you so much, I'll definitely keep a chocolate bar with me at all times.

But in this case, I know his advice already. I breathe in and breathe out, my heartbeat slowing, the pounding in my head slowly receding.

“Okay, if I’m going to get out of here without simultaneously turning into a shish kebab and a vegetable, I can’t go out through the cloud; it’s too risky, but how?” I say with a steadying voice.

Then, with an alarmed one noticing my injuries, she said, “But before that, let’s patch me up.”

I pull my backpack off, take off my rudimentary armor formed of steel plates, and get out the roll of fabric I formed around a bar of iron. I then wrap all the various wounds I got getting in here tightly before tightening them off.

"HAH, STEVENS, LEARNING HOW TO DRESS WOUNDS WASN’T A WASTE, LOOK AT ME NOW,” I say, my voice infused with snark and pride, before I suddenly stop with a wince.

“This is going to be a bitch to heal, especially since I still have no idea how I get my nutrients. Although, frankly, I’m not going to think too much about it lest I expect the wrong things and promptly starve to death.” I say this with a voice tinged with sleep and pain while wiping my forehead.

Yeah, let’s think about nicer things, like an escape! What could dispel this cloud? Well, the bangle seemed to have something to do with it; it could have generated the cloud, and certainly this cloud is very strange even compared to others. It had its own intelligent defense system that reacted to me coming in here and thought of new ways to murder me mid-ordeal.

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Plus, the cloud is formed around a very strange emotion. The emotion of language—how the hell is language an emotion? I’ve never seen a cloud quite like this; even that cloud of just war I found was an emotion, just an extremely complex one. Mixing dozens of emotions to form the complex idea of a just war, from righteous anger to compassion and fear, all wrapped up into one extremely dense package.

So maybe this cloud was made by the bracelet as a protection measure? It was certainly very dangerous.

Well, if that's true, I bet if I break this stupid bracelet, I could get myself out of here. It’s not certain that I’ll get out of here if I break the bangle, but any other idea has its own dangers. I shrug. I don't have any other ideas, so I guess I’m going to break the bracelet.

I pull out my notebook and start writing down my plan, only to stop, pencil above paper, with no idea whatsoever on how to write the thoughts down. I barely resist the urge to scream at the injustice of it all, gritting my teeth. before, in a fit of anger, taking out the stupid bracelet responsible for my problems and slamming it into the battered metal plate that was my shield.

Only for nothing other than a hurt wrist to occur. I turn the bracelet over and over, but no matter where I look, there’s not even a scratch on the godforsaken thing!

My mind is still fizzing like a pot of boiling water spilling from its pot. I pull out my former hair braces and my now powerful laser and unleash it on that stupid bangle. The hair braces vibrate dangerously in my hands as the laser batters the bangle with focused photons hot enough to melt iron in less than a second. I smile a dangerous grin, my face lit up by the immense light generated by the laser as I imagine my freedom. Only for that expression to drop when I have to frantically turn off the braces when they overheat, my tools giving out before the bangle.

I scream with frustration as I leave the hair braces floating in the astral, which are too hot to touch from the fraction of energy they output, while the bangle that received the force was cool as a cucumber. Literally, it didn’t heat up at all!

Oh, that bangle must have some protective enchantments in it! And with no magical destruction of my own, I’m outgunned. Plus, with how many runes were packed into that damn bracelet, I probably can’t break the stupid thing.

So, what am I going to do now?I won’t be able to break free from the bracelet plan with how unbelievably sturdy the damn thing is. What can I do that could get me out of here?

Teleportation?

Break the cloud?

A Tunnel?

I sigh, let’s get through these one by one. Teleportation is obviously beyond my abilities. I could barely handwave and reason my way into just getting a lot of nails, much less walking through two points. Hell, if I could do that, I would teleport back home!

And how could I break the cloud—it's a cloud; what am I supposed to do, eat it like cotton candy?

A tunnel of iron might work; it might take a while and be extremely claustrophobic, but if the iron insulates me, I could escape. But I would have to abandon the bangle. It's obviously an extremely powerful artifact, considering the effects I can directly see. I have no idea what it really does. It would be difficult to leave such a powerful artifact behind; however, knowledge is more valuable than some random item. And I will prioritize my life above all else. So the plan that also provides me a shield from the wall of text is the best.

I start by smoothing out the battered slab of iron that was my shield and removing the plates tied around my chest as armor. Using them as the first two sides of the tunnel leaves one plate in order to create more. I place them in the center so that my tunnel does not accidentally dip into the cloud.

And I start pumping out slabs, although frankly, past the first four slabs, they get much thinner with less wasted metal. In the beginning, I used all dust, but as time went on, I just used nails and then slapped dust on the outside so it was smooth. After an indeterminate amount of time, I made it—a tunnel of iron for me to crawl out of this godforsaken cloud.

The tunnel is a raggedy contraption of blackened iron welded together, the outsides sporting a thorny exterior made out of sharp nails. The insides are smooth, however, and filled with handles spaced at around two arm lengths so that I can quickly pull my way in. The outside has been battered by the text floating through the cloud many a time during the duration of my build, but it has stayed strong. I float in a power pose filled with pride before my creation, although it is ugly, it is finished, and it is strong.

But as I am about to climb in, I notice something: the cloud is inside! I look away, and before I lose my cool, I look again, this time expecting that since the cloud is a gas, it can’t pass through solid steel. And this time it’s clear! I smile, but that smile doesn’t stay on for long, as I am scarcely inside the tube before the cloud pushes in. As if my magic were a sticky jar that it was slowly forcing open, pushing past my resistance. AGH! The cloud rushes its way inside, and it feels like glass shattering in my mind as a piercing headache stops me in my tracks.

I cradle my head in my hands as my hope for a perfect escape fails. While the tunnel could almost perfectly protect me from the impacts of the script swirling around inside the cloud, it can’t protect me from the cloud stealing even more of my language.

Who knows if I could even recognize myself on the other side if I attempted it? I shiver; I’m definitely not going back in there. I refuse to lose myself; I can do this without sacrificing the last bits of my language. I steel my gaze.

“Because fuck it, I’m breaking this cloud!” with a determined voice and a finger pointed towards the future.

If the cloud won’t allow me to escape without paying a price, I’ll do the same. I'm not getting out of here with anything but perfection. And there is one way that I know of to break these things: consumption.

Because if I can eat seeds, why can’t I eat clouds as well? I don’t care what happens afterward; I will break this cloud!

The problem seemed to be size back then, so why don’t I divide it into portions? My iron slabs managed to resist the clouds for a little while, so I can touch the clouds. That means that I can make a spoon and EAT IT!

In a mad rictus of anger and fear, I create a large soup spoon, the handle of which is porous and made up of smelted nails from the IBA, and the bowl of which has a smooth surface of blackened iron.

With my face contorted at the rage of failure, I scoop out a bit of the cloud, holding my reasoning in my mind, and eat the cloud! I feel a rush of something like the feeling I get when I unpeel a cloud, and strangely enough, I’m also feeling a bit peckish.

So I quickly scooped up another helping of language. The feeling now intensified, like my brain was being added to, like the cloud was adding a point in the intricate grid that was my mind. With the knowledge that it was working, I frantically scooped more and more, feeling more language being added to my brain.

My stomach started to spasm with a piercing hunger so deep that I just clutched my stomach with my hands in so much pain that I desired to claw at my stomach. I can’t do anything but twitching with pain so deep that I can’t even muster the energy to eat the last scraps of granola I have.

I can’t think, I can’t move, but the pain stops any attempt at sleep, so I just float curled into a fetal position in the center of a cloud of language for ages. And when the pain finally stops, I can scarcely even feel the relief before I immediately fall asleep.

—

My eyes flutter open to see myself floating in the slightly larger hollow in the middle of the cloud of knowledge. My mind darted with thoughts born of the strange experience yesterday before I quieted it. I start my workout routine, strange as it is, floating in the astral. I jog in place and swim amidst the mysterious fluid I live and breathe. Before doing a meditation session, I brought my home into my mind’s eye with steady breaths and stood calmer and more sure than before.

I stretch my arms out and start my work again. I think I might have found the price of magic. When I devoured the cloud of knowledge, I started to feel hungry for the first time since I arrived in the Astral Plane. The price of magic isn’t nutrients or work energy, but something else.

No other magic I wrought made me hungry, and it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that what I did was eat something using magic.

I think that the cost of magic is madness, or more accurately, increasing your emotions. And those specific magics increase specific emotions. So if I create techniques with emotions in mind, I can increase the chance of making them.

But although this is fascinating and I will have to test it back home, I need to get out of here. I think that if you reach a limit, you can’t do certain magic anymore. Like how, with the IPA, I would randomly stop being able to do it, but as time went on, I could make more and more. If I stop right before I collapse, I should be able to steadily erode the cloud of language until I eat it all. Because why stop at escape? I can turn this tragedy into benefits through my wit and work.

With my plan of escape in mind, the experience became a litany of tedium. I slowly consumed my way out of the cloud like I was James from James and the Giant Peach. Except I had no delightfully eccentric bug companions; instead, I just had a skeleton stuck together with grisly sinew.

Additionally, I had no escape from my boredom. I worked constantly to get out of there, only taking breaks to make sure that I didn’t collapse into a ball of hunger.

I had no books to entertain myself since Stevens’ corpse was left at the base due to the delicate arrangement of wires involved. Without literacy, there are no notes to writeens' corpse was left at the base due to the delicate arrangement of wires involved. Without literacy, there are no notes to write. Just drawing random things while waiting to feel less hungry

So like that, I devoured it, my demonic ladle slowly consuming the entirety of the cloud's existence, leaving not a single scrap behind, and with one last tired scoop, there was nothing left. The Bangles inner lights dim and die, with the film at the center of the cloud popping out of existence.

revealing a clear sky leading me home to take new knowledge and build it into something more.