“What the fuck?” Catori sent. I felt her staring through my eyes from within our soul.

“You can say that again.”

The book’s title wasn’t all that spectacular. It simply read ‘Diary of a Mage’. But it was English. A Roman alphabet written in smooth letters, curved like calligraphy but not too excessive and still easy to read.

I extended a few tendrils of darkness, very carefully taking the book out of the box. It was in surprisingly good condition, considering the remains we found in the cellar. The box might have had a preservative effect on the paper and leather. There was a pile of notes bound by a leather string underneath it covered in fine writing. These were in Ordugh, though, so I turned back to the book. I opened up the first page to see lines upon lines of handwritten English text.

I started reading.

This is my diary. Nobody in this world speaks English so the language will be sufficient as a code. If only I had studied my Kanji more, I could’ve made a more difficult code. No matter, even if someone eventually figures it out, my secrets aren’t that dangerous compared to some of the things I’ve seen. If you are someone that has deciphered and studied it to that point, congratulations! Let me tell you a bit about myself.

My name is James Suzuki, or Suzuki Hiro, as my mother called me. I’m from a different world called Earth. My mom was Japanese, my dad American, and I grew up in Boston. I don’t know how I made it here but I’m happy about this second chance. I wasn’t a good person over there, we’ll see how much of that still weighs on me in a few years. I found myself in this world two years ago, waking up in a strange cellar tied to a wooden bed. A freaky man was standing over me cackling with insanity before falling over backwards. I still remember the smell of his corpse rotting over the next few days. I was too weak to free myself and had to wait for someone to find me.

I later learned the man had been a mage of sorts, they call themselves thaumaturges in this world but it’s really just magic with extra steps, and he had tried to create a humanoid toy for his pleasure. Oh, right. My body was female, maybe 20 years old, and pretty hot if I was still a man. Something was definitely wrong with my brain because I not only lost all interest in sex, no matter with man or woman, I also didn’t care that I had tits. Still don’t, to be honest. They do get in the way, sometimes. At least I don’t have to deal with menstruation. Guess the pervert didn’t want his ‘toy’ to get pregnant…

I stopped, blinking. That was barely half of the first page. The writing was so clean and fine, James had fit in a lot just on this little introduction.

“That’s kinda fucked up”, Catori said, “I mean… Really? Basically like what happened to Alex but with a perverted flesh golem variation.”

“We do know that you can make golems from flesh. Making them look like a human, though? Seems to be a lot of work. Alex would have liked if her creator had found this research, probably. Though there really is no need to go with flesh when you have access to thaumium, unless for this purpose…”

I skimmed through the next few bits where James talked about the first few months of his new life. Their new life, probably. They never specified what gender they thought themselves to be but reading between the lines, they just didn’t care. They went by Jamie mostly because it fit the body and spent some time living with the thaumaturge that found them in the cellar. Jamie was hired as a servant and did mundane tasks like preparing food, washing clothes, and buying groceries. This other thaumaturge had no interest in their body at all.

They learned the basics of thaumaturgy through observation and started reading the Thaumonomicon left behind by their ‘creator’ in their free time. It took a few months before they felt ready to get started on doing anything and of course, they were caught by their new employer. This part I read a little more closely.

This man wasn’t very special, is what I always thought. He only did some very basic work with enchanting his robes and a set of strange boots that made him run faster. When he saw me using his Infusion Altar, he absolutely flipped. I took two blasts of lightning to the face before I even registered what was happening. Then he suddenly went completely silent, because the lightning didn’t do anything to me.

The idiot told me to stand still and shot even more lightning at me. Of course, I dodged. Stupid guy didn’t even think I’d disobey him. I ran around the pedestals and got in range to deliver a punch. He took at least ten hits before he fell over. I only realized a few minutes later that I didn’t stop hitting him. His head was mush and my hands didn’t even feel bruised. That’s how I learned I was insanely strong and tough.

I decided to take over the idiot’s lab and do my own research. It took me a few weeks to figure everything out but apparently I was a golem. A highly advanced version, built on a thaumium skeleton with a flesh exterior, but still a golem.

Catori spoke up.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Did Jamie not look at their status? Like, ever?”

“Either nobody told them, or… this book is older than the system.”

Catori went silent for a minute.

“It would be possible. There was no thaumium skeleton in the cellar so Jamie probably didn’t die there.”

I nodded.

“This also means that time isn’t linear between this world and Earth… Did we ever compare to Alex what years we died?”

“No, we didn’t. I’ll ask her when she arrives in Serrington.”

“Do that.”

I returned to reading. The next few pages started to detail more and more of the research Jamie did. Most of the work was looking into how they arrived in this world, so there was a lot related to golems. They had some morales left, at least, since they never made any advanced golems. Jamie knew that it would only create slaves like what had been planned for them. There were a few strange paragraphs detailing how they found out their brain was made from multiple horse brains. They learned about it when they felt attracted to horses, both male and female. Jamie then figured out they could partially reprogram their brain as well. Thinking really hard about how disgusting being attracted to horses was had been enough to completely remove all of those feelings.

That led to the realization that Jamie was not a ‘free’ advanced golem. They were still imprinted to a master, only that their master was themselves. There were a few pages of speculation what that could mean in the long run. Some of them were fearful while others were ecstatic. After all, if they could change their sexual orientation within ten minutes, what else could happen from random thoughts they might have?

I shared a mental glance with Catori. That was something we should probably ask Alex about at some point. Maybe the effect came from the more malleable biological brain and Alex wouldn’t have any problems but better safe than sorry.

I kept reading and finally reached the end of the introduction. Jamie had arrived in a decently large human city and managed to get their hands on a thaumaturgical lab.

This is it. That’s my life’s story up to this point. From here on out, I’ll consult this book as a diary and write regular entries. It feels good getting all of it out there, even if it’s unlikely anyone will ever read this.

There was a tiny break before the first entry began.

Year 3, Day 1

Dear Diary. This is Jamie. Yesterday I finished writing down my life’s story. I decided today is my third birthday in this world. I don’t know how true that is but… I’m still riding the high of sorting out my emotions. Or it might be the high of last night. I tried making myself attracted to women and it worked. And I found that cutie I spent some time with. Maybe I should focus more on my research, figure out if I can go back, but I deserve a break. I removed the attraction after seeing her off earlier today. We talked and it’s a one-time thing, definitely. I’ll be able to get some work done tomorrow. Maybe I’ll treat myself more often. The high from last night was great. My body was built for sex, after all.

Year 3, Day 2

Dear Diary. This is Jamie. Today I set up my lab. The Infusion Altar is working without issues but I think I’ll need to clean the jars before I can use them. Maybe I’ll do the whole essence distillery with the pipes and everything. I plan to stay here for a long time, after all. I have two weeks before the king’s delegation is coming by to give me a research task. Thaumaturges in this country have a lot of freedom but they are given a goal by the king or a lord and have to share their results once per year. Depending on their progress, the thaumaturge is getting more or less gold to spend in the next year. I hope I’ll get something interesting. My personal interest is so far away from possible, I won’t be able to work on it all the time or I’ll go insane.

The entries kept going like that. Walls of small text written clearly to preserve page count and not make for a good reading experience. I ended up sharing the work with Catori, each of us reading every second entry and sharing anything interesting. Not that there was much.

Jamie dutifully pictured their life and talked about small parts of their research but there wasn’t much detail anywhere. The research they were set to work on was related to making golems that could be used for building roads by non-thaumaturges. It sounded somewhat interesting but wasn’t all that spectacular. A simple set of guiding stones could easily be placed by mundane people to line out material locations and where to build and then òne just had to carry the golems there and they would do their job. Jamie took a little longer trying for a more complicated solution but eventually found the same thing I spotted instantly. I heard Catori chuckling in the back of my head for some reason.

Things got interesting almost two years in, on day 312 of year four. Jamie had finally started to absorb vis from a node into their body instead of into a wand just a few days earlier. I was really confused how their body had not run out of juice before then without a way to constantly recharge but maybe the baseline of golem building was different back then. Or the humanoid form could eat food to supply itself… That made a lot of sense, so it was probably correct.

Anyway, from the somewhat confused rambling in that entry, Jamie had reached minor vis enrichment. They noticed they needed less food and gained the ability to move vis with just their will. From that, Jamie quickly and correctly judged that larger nodes would provide more vis and empower them even more and they decided to prepare an expedition to look for them.

At that point, it was getting dark. We had spent the whole day just reading and I was starting to feel exhausted. I decided to call it a night and get back to things tomorrow. We had already learned a lot. One or two more days of reading should get us through the diary and then I could figure out if I should do more research on the taint or move on and look for additional allies.