“Portal…” Mana Kanno was wearing a serene smile on her face.
“Yes, Mana?” the sentient book replied with a jolly voice – fully aware that the girl was doing her best to hold back and not rip out its pages one by one in rage.
They were in a rather precarious situation. Mana was keeping her head low and running as fast as her short legs could carry her. Behind them fireballs crashed into the neatly arranged bookshelves, spreading all-consuming flames that licked over the ample amounts of fuel offered to them.
“You said that this was an infinite library. With endless amounts of space between readable books.”
“Yes, Mana.”
“So… how did all of these wizards find us?!”
Half a dozen red-robed men were after her, flinging spells and curses (the verbal, non-magic kind) alike. More and more of the randomized books went up in flames, their nonsensical contents never to be seen by a human eye.
“I have no idea, missy!”
“Ugh, this sucks. I want to go home where I’m safe.” Another book spoke up. This one was labeled ‘baRrier’, and in this very moment it erected a spell by the same name, which manifested like a glass pane behind Mana as a fireball threatened to obliterate her entire existence. It crashed against the invisible wall and spread its flames on the corridor between bookcase and endless void, eliciting a few more curses from the red-robed men.
“Gah! Get me out of here! Portal, get me… two hundred million rooms up and forward in a diagonal line!”
“Coming right up, Mana!”
A portal spawned right in front of her, its blue edges faintly glowing. Naturally, with all the rooms of the library looking identical, it looked like it was just a blue ring hanging in the air – until Mana jumped through it and vanished with its closing.
***
“Ugh… so much running around. I want to be in a cozy place with other books squeezing my sides. I feel safe between other books,” Barrier kept complaining.
“You know, I’ve never met a book that’s a shut-in.”
Mana looked around between the two tomes she held in her hands.
“Silly. All books are shut-ins,” Portal replied.
Mana furrowed her brow and wanted to reply to that with a counter – but then she rolled her eyes from side to side as she seriously thought about what Portal just said, then she bit the nail of her thumb as she thought about it further.
“…damn, you might actually be right about that.”
“Why do you look so offended that I’m correct?!”
Their little chat was interrupted by multiple, purple-colored portals opening around them.
“Again?! How do they keep finding our coordinates?”
Mana sprinted into the next room. Behind her she could hear the angry shouts of the red-robed men.
“She had an index! Don’t let her escape!”
“Drive her from his majesty’s library!”
“Burn the thief!”
She wasn’t under any illusions that she could solve this entire incident peacefully somehow.
“If only I had a spell to attack them back!” She complained.
“You’re the one who said that ‘atomize’ sounded too scary and you didn’t want to collect it.”
“Well, I changed my mind, take me there now!”
“They would just be on us before we have time to-“
While they were arguing they were suddenly caught in a gale as one of the wizards changed tactics and attacked with a wind spell – Mana saw the railing pass below her – then the black maw of the abyss below.
Her eyes went wide, and she let out a scream as she fell, and fell.
image [https://i.imgur.com/xVo0VeL.png]
Twenty minutes earlier…
***
“Bringing you to the large index, Mana.”
Mana stepped through the portal, ready to be this library’s new queen. With an index pointing to books contained in the library at her side, she would soon wield grand power. Or at least, so she hoped.
The library was the same as ever, and Mana found herself between two rooms.
← From 076dccd8d10f420133993f8c8bfaf92: Earth
Roman letters, Kanji, Kana, Cyrillic, Arabic Numerals, 534 pages
From 076dccd8d10f420133993f8c8bfaf92: Earth
Roman letters, Kanji, Kana, Cyrillic, Arabic Numerals, 535 pages →
Mana opened her index, flipping through the pages.
“I’m not going to compare the coordinates here to that.”
She pointed at microscopic carvings under the signs pointing to the two adjacent rooms. On further inspection, they were codes, written in alphabetic letters, in kanji, in all sorts of writing systems – both those known to Mana and those which were utterly alien to her. Apparently, the infinite coordinates of the infinite library were captured on a finite space, utilizing an infinite number system. With writing systems from across the multiverse infinity could be captured in a single digit, as there was an infinite number of symbols to choose from – and yet, a few million microscopic etchings sat next to each other, containing fractals of more etchings, containing coordinates. It made her head spin just to think about it.
“You don’t have to; That’s what I’m here for. It’s to the right. Opposite wall, bottom shelf… eighth book from the left.”
Mana followed her leather-bound companion’s instructions and let her fingers slide along the spines in front of her. Finally, she found exactly what she was looking for. ‘Large index’ was written on the spine, with the ‘index’ being the English word while ‘large’ was written in kanji and kana.
“Interesting... our index has it all printed in Roman letters,” Mana observed.
“Same as the coordinates, the index shows names of books by the meaning of their titles, rather than a matching set of characters. It wouldn’t work any other way, with the difference in character sets.”
“Hmm?” Mana didn’t really listen and pulled the book out of the shelf already, opening the cover.
She looked at the first entry. ‘aTomize’ was written, followed by seemingly random combinations of Roman, Japanese, Cyrillic and Arabic characters with numbers in-between.
“Are those coordinates, too?”
“Yes. In a number system far surpassing the ones you use for computers.”
“I wonder how much this Kanji is worth in the number system.” Mana pointed at the Kanji for ‘cat’ which stuck out like a sore thumb in the mess of different letters.
“It’s 578.” Portal responded.
Mana flipped through the pages – the coordinates for ‘atomize’ kept going on and on. She didn’t want to know the absolute value of that Kanji in this whole mess – she had a feeling that it would be a number so large that it would make her head spin.
“Either way… what kind of spell is atomize? It sounds scary.”
“It atomizes things.”
Mana didn’t answer and just stared at the wall. It was kind of obvious, yeah.
“Sounds too scary, I’ll look for another one.”
“You’re the witch here, so you get to decide.”
Mana kept flipping the pages until she reached the end of the coordinates.
‘baRrier’, followed by more pages of nonsense, pointing to its location.
“That one sounds good. Starting with a defensive spell can never be wrong!”
Mana announced happily and closed the large index – she stowed it away in a sling she made her mother sew into the way too large sleeves of her witch outfit.
“Bring me to barrier!”
“On it, Mana!”
Once more, Mana found herself between two rooms.
← From 076dccd8d10f420133993f8c8bfaf92: Earth
Roman letters, Cistercian Numerals, 153 pages
From 076dccd8d10f420133993f8c8bfaf92: Earth
Roman Letters, Cistercian Numerals, 154 pages →
Mana confidently walked up to the shelf and exact book which Portal pointed out to her. With a quick grab she held Barrier in her hand.
As if the book felt her touch, it complained immediately.
“Put me back.”
“No.”
“Please. It’s cold and uncomfortable out here. I like it when I’m sheltered and safe…”
Mana furrowed her brow and started to flip through the book. There were letters, but also other, strange symbols. They looked like runes. All of them were built around a vertical line with other lines being placed either on the top left, top right, bottom left or bottom right. There appeared to be a system to them, but she couldn’t discern it. Spread through the book they created the magic patterns awakening Barrier’s magic powers and its sentience as a book. Mana slid it into one of the slings in her sleeves.
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“Here. Is that warm and comfortable enough for you?”
“It’s passable.” The book responded in its whiny voice.
Mana let out a sigh and pulled out her large index again. She started to flip through the pages, looking for whatever other treasures she could discover with it.
It was in that moment that she noticed something impossible: another person in the same room as her. A red-robed figure stepped through one of the doors into the quadratic space. He was a tall man with a black, pointy beard and a cruel expression. He scanned her up and down, with his eyes remaining on the index in her hand.
He raised a hand and moved it in a beckoning motion for people behind him. Five more red-robed people stepped into the room before he spoke his command.
“Get her!”
From this point on she got chased and, ultimately, cast into the abyss.
image [https://i.imgur.com/xVo0VeL.png]
She was falling and falling. It was all she could do to prevent her big hat from flying off her head and leaving her behind. Rooms upon rooms passed by her, filled with books, all identical to one another, save for the contents of their pages.
After a while the sight became unnerving – the way the black abyss remained at the exact same distance while the floors kept passing her by, as if they were continuously created in the distance, like an old screensaver that her father used.
“Portal, get me out of here!” She shouted, already feeling a little dizzy.
“I can’t!” the book answered.
“What?! Why?”
Portal hesitated before it answered again.
“We are going insanely fast. Wherever I go to get out of here will probably kill you!”
“Can’t you bring me back to Earth and have me land in water?”
“Could you survive jumping out of a plane and landing in water, Mana?!”
Mana gritted her teeth and conceded the argument. Tears welled up in her eyes again as she feverishly thought about her options.
She had an idea.
“Barrier, do you just block projectiles, or can you carry weight as well?”
“I am capable of floating and carrying weights, but why bother? I just want to go home….”
Mana groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Look, if we make it through this, I’ll put you in a very comfortable little bookshelf between manga in my room, okay?”
There was a long silence before the book replied.
“What’s manga?”
“Books with pictures of pretty women in them!”
“Hmmm?” the book went silent again, as if contemplating.
“How pretty?”
Mana rolled her eyes and started to describe the Celestial Sisters to her book.
***
“Okay, I’m in,” the book finally concluded.
“Finally! On my signal, then. Portal, I need you to create an entrance in my path and have the exit right next to it, pointing up.”
“Hm… coming up.” Portal mumbled.
“Three, two, one… now!”
Mana got swallowed up by the portal and her direction reversed – identical rooms still passed her by, but got slower, and slower. For five seconds Mana ascended in the tower of bookshelves, but then her momentum stopped for an instance.
“Barrier, now!”
“Okay, okay, geez…”
A pane of transparent energy appeared under Mana, just as her momentum was entirely cancelled out by gravity and she fell down again. With a gentle little ‘fwomp’ she landed on her back and breathed a sigh of relief. She looked over her shoulder, shuddering as she still saw the endless abyss below her.
“It worked.” She said, first with a breathless little voice, then she giggled and let out a laugh.
“It worked! I’m a genius!”
“How in the world did you even conceive such an idea?” Portal demanded to know.
“Oh, my father once let me play this old video game where you do stuff like this all the time.”
“A video game?”
“Yes, Portal. A video game.” Mana grinned at her book companion.
“You share a name with it.”
image [https://i.imgur.com/xVo0VeL.png]
“But now we need to find out how they even keep track of us… Barrier, be ready to let us fall again if I give the signal.”
“Sure, whatever.” The book replied with a yawn.
She heard portals opening, but none of them were on either of the two floors which she was currently floating between. The sounds came from below. She peeked through the barrier’s transparent pane but could see nothing. The voices she heard were indistinguishable as well.
“…right, Barrier. Another job for you.”
“Ugh, what now?”
“Drop me and then catch me a meter down, then drop me again and so on… I’ll tell you when to stop.”
“Fine…”
Mana stood up and braced herself for the repeated drops. The barrier disappeared and she braced herself, bending her knees upon landing. Then she repeated the motion.
Hop. Hop. Hop. Hop.
“Okay, stop.” She whispered after roughly 150 of such jumps as she could finally see the figures moving on the lower floor. The voices were intelligible as well.
“Third-rate mages, the lot of you! Blasting her over the edge like that! Flinging fireballs at her and consuming possible unclaimed treasures of the library! We are to capture her, grab her spell books, then we can dispose of her. Speaking of which, where the hell is she?!”
Another mage shook his head, his fingers tracing the lines of a spell book in his hand.
“No, the readings from ‘detect magic: Portal’ are clear. She used the spell and left a portal in this very room.”
“That’s how they were tracking us!” Mana whispered to Portal.
“This is bad, Mana. They will find your world if we leave.”
Mana furrowed her brow, staring at the red-robed mages below.
“What do we do?” she whispered.
“We could grab ‘atomize’.” Portal suggested.
“We probably won’t have enough time to grab the book before they come. Also, that’s messed up, Portal, I can’t just atomize them!”
“They tried to kill you, Mana.”
“Still…!” She peeked down at the mages. One of them barked orders.
“Well, if she isn’t here she may have run away. Search the shelves! It’s possible she used a coordinate and abandoned the spell located here.”
Mana’s eyes followed the man who carried the ‘detect magic’ tome.
“Listen, you two. I have a plan.”
image [https://i.imgur.com/xVo0VeL.png]
Zarg-Urtax was mumbling curses under his breath. For thirty years he served his nation’s sorcerer king now. Wielding mighty spell tomes, he was able to lay waste to entire regiments of enemy soldiers. But here, scouring the mighty library of infinity, he had to follow the orders of a younger wizard, just because he had five years more experience in this place than him. None of them even managed to find any legible tomes during their tenure here, except for him, Zarg-Urtax. By all rights he should have been promoted, but as it turned out that his tome’s spell was only good to detect the usage of ‘Portal’ within the confines of the library, no one paid his discovery any mind.
Until today. The sorcerer king noticed that an intrusion happened in the dimensional marble, which he kept by his side at all times. And Zarg-Urtax’ tome picked up the repeated use of a ‘Portal’ spell book.
His superior might be barking orders at him or cursing him for his reckless use of magic, but the truth of the matter was that without him and the tome bound to his will, he would be clueless as to where this curious little witch with her index was at this very moment.
He pulled books out of the shelves, one after the other. The content was quickly checked for magical writing. Everything else was discarded, tossed into the abyss. Such was the official procedure, to mark rooms that were already searched by mages. With a space as expansive as ‘infinity’, one couldn’t waste time on searching a room twice.
He opened the pages of a book he found, and his eyes darted over the script.
‘Margites, by Homer’
He furrowed his brow and flipped through the pages, stopping at a random line to read.
‘There came to Kolophon an old man and divine singer, a servant of the Muses and of far-shooting Apollon. In his dear hands he held a sweet-toned lyre.’
He flipped a few more pages.
‘He knew many things but knew all badly... The gods had taught him neither to dig nor to plow, nor any other skill; he failed in every craft.’
Even more.
‘The fox knows many a wile; but the hedgehog’s one trick can beat them all.’
He closed the book, furrowing his brow even deeper. This appeared to be a long comedic poem about a stupid man by a poet from some faraway land.
In other words, garbage.
He tossed the book over the railing into the abyss.
While he pulled more and more books from the shelves he kept thinking about that weird, blue-haired girl in wizard robes. Why did she never try to fight back? Was she here by chance? Was she even a spellcaster?
He pondered what to do once they caught her. Without her portal spell they could simply toss her into the abyss like all the useless books. They did so before with other intruders, or with wizards who tried to betray the sorcerer king and hide precious finds.
At that point the person sentenced to death had two choices: Starve to death in free fall or try to direct their fall towards one of the rooms and become nothing but a stain on the carpet.
Come to think of it, she didn’t look bad.
His grandson was at a similar age, judging by her appearance. And he needed another maid – his punishments bled the life out of the last one. Maybe he could convince his superior to let him keep the girl and turn her into a gift.
In that moment he heard a high-pitched voice, coming from a few rooms above.
“Eyes here, stinky robes!”
Everyone in the room turned their attention to the pit, and the young witch soared past them, diving feet-first into the endless darkness.
Zarg-Urtax only had time to blink once in bewilderment, then a hole in reality opened up in front of his face and through this portal he saw two boots rapidly approaching him – with precious little time to react before everything went dark and he could hear the bone of his nose crack.
image [https://i.imgur.com/xVo0VeL.png]
Success! Mana could hear something crack as she hit the wizard with the full force of her freefall. He was launched back into the shelf behind him, scattering all the remaining books in every direction, while Mana was gently caught by barrier as gravity pulled her to the ground.
Oh, crap.
The books weren’t part of the equation at all. If she was particularly unlucky, they were now covering whatever tome the wizard used to locate her. She looked around in a panic as the wizards readied themselves to toss more spells in her direction, but they seemed hesitant now. Maybe getting chewed out for using fireballs in a library influenced their decision making – either way, Mana used the gained time to rifle through the books covering the wizard until she heard loud complaints after touching one of them.
“Let go of me, wench! I only serve the mighty Zarg-Urtax! HELLO? ANYONE? HELP! HELP!”
Mana made a disgusted face as the book started to scream, but she had no time. Barrier had to intercept a few spells that were finally flung her way. They looked like arrows made from pure light.
“They really want to kill me!”
She shouted as she started to run, entering the next room before she summoned Portal.
“Take me… a googol rooms forward!” She shouted. She heard that number and how absurdly long it supposedly was from one of her classmates recently.
To her surprise, Portal obliged and opened a gateway somewhere else. Mana hopped through the opening, as magic spells exploded behind her, making books rain out of shelves.
***
“And now we see if they can still find us…” Mana wheezed, standing bent-over as she was catching her breath. She was utterly horrified by the near-death experience. But at the same time, she was just as excited. The rush of adrenaline spread its taste on her tongue and with a first taste, she became addicted.
“What a crazy thing to do on the second day in the library!” She let out a laugh, sitting down and looking up the endless tower of bookshelves.
“I’m so glad I found this place!”
“Well, I’m sooooooo happy for you.” The sarcastic voice came from her hand.
“You kidnapper! You evil woman! My master will find you and feed you to the dogs! I will scream until they find you. Watch me! Ahem. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Mana grimaced and dropped the book, covering her ears, running around a corner and into the hallway between two rooms, peeking around the corner to watch the foreign book.
“What’s its problem?”
“Oh, I haven’t told you yet, Mana.” Portal began.
“This library is finders, keepers. When someone finds a book, it is forever bound to them. No one else can make it do what they want unless it’s officially gifted or pledged to someone else by the owner.”
“Hm…” Mana looked at the screaming book and made a decision.
***
“A-hah! The evil woman returns! But I will continue screaming until my master’s benefactors find us and punish you!”
There was a short pause in the book’s monologue.
“What are you doing, girl?!”
Now there was genuine panic in its voice. Mana didn’t hesitate and simply tossed it into the abyss, watching its pages fluttering as it approached the darkness and was swallowed whole by it.
“Unusually cruel. I would have just torn it apart,” observed Portal.
***
Mana went home after that incident. She pulled off her large wizard hat and tossed it aside as she let herself fall face-first onto her bed.
“Hey. Where’s the pretty girls in books?” Barrier spoke up.
“Yes, yes, be patient…” she grumbled, getting up from her bed and sorting Barrier nicely between two volumes of the official Celestial Sister manga series.
“Oh…oh! This is wonderful! Young witch, you have my eternal loyalty!”
“Yes, yes.” Mana yawned and turned around to get back to her bed – then she let out a shout and jumped against her bookshelf.
She was face to face with a weird girl poking her head out of a portal. She had blue eyes, or rather, one blue eye, as her right one was covered by an eyepatch. Her hair was a dirty blonde color, kept at shoulder length. She wore the uniform of Mana’s middle school, yet she didn’t remember ever seeing this girl before.
“Yo, Mana!” The weird girl greeted her, lifting one hand. Mana opened and closed her mouth but couldn’t bring words out.
“What date is it?” the weird girl asked. Mana couldn’t tell, she just lost all recollection of concepts such as the current time of day, or day of the week, or day of the month. She wanted to know who created a portal in her bedroom and why.
Still, she looked to the side, to where her calendar hung on the wall, to check for herself. The weird girl followed her head’s movement with her eye and then saw the calendar.
“Uh-oh!” she exclaimed, then she pulled her head back into the space on her side of the portal.
“Hey, Mana! We went too far!”
What in the…?
“We went too far?! Oh, blast it, I knew we couldn’t trust this spell. How far?”
Mana couldn’t believe it. That was definitely her voice. That was what it sounded like when she recorded herself and played it back.
“It’s February!”
“February?! That’s when I just started! Get back in here, I’ll bring us to September, no matter what!”
“Alright!”
The girl poked her head out of the portal again and put a finger on her lips.
“Just… forget this ever happened, okay? Bye, Mana. See you soon!”
With that she pulled her head back into the portal. The hole in reality closed and it was as if nothing ever happened.
Mana sat down on her writing desk’s chair and stared into space for a long while.
This library is going to bring me to some of the craziest places and make some of the craziest events happen.
She grinned and her right hand was shaking hard enough that she had to grip her wrist with her left hand.
I can’t wait!