March 2024

***

Mana Kanno yawned. She was on her way back from school, and a trip to the library on top of that. Recently she spent more time roaming the empty rooms of the infinite library than she spent studying or sleeping. She held a book in her hand which she retrieved during today’s trip; ‘Blast’ was its name. This was the second offensive spell she managed to gather since her encounter with the wizards of the sorcerer kingdom. In total she possessed five spells now: Blast, Arrow, Portal, Barrier, and Accelerate Target.

She didn’t really know what to do with the last one. It accelerated time for things she pointed at, but it could only be cast on objects – and maybe microorganisms, judging by the mold she watched grow in record time from a single piece of bread she attempted the spell on. She took a detour today, walking along the artificial riverbank. She stopped as she saw a red glow under a bridge; A figure with glowing red hair was pointing at a large jar placed under a hovering fireball in front of her and shouted. Things like ‘Hiyah!’ and ‘Huooh!’, like she was straining whenever she did the pointing movement.

Mana looked around, wondering if anyone else could see that weirdo. Judging by the quick glances and accelerated steps they did.

Weirdos are my specialty lately, Mana thought, sliding down the slope and stepping under the bridge.

The strange woman was obviously a Magical Girl. A corset, a skirt, tall boots with garter. A uniform jacket that was misused as a cape. She had all the marks of Magical Girl outfit design. Her red hair emitting its own glow was an unusual touch, though.

So why is she pointing her wand at a large jar full of fish and salt?

“Hiyah!”

The woman shouted, then she leaned over and looked incredibly pale. A sound came from her like she was about to throw up – and not because of the fishy smell.

“Uhm... hello.” Mana finally announced her presence.

The odd woman looked towards the girl and immediately propped herself up, hands on her hips.

“Gyahaha! What’s this, mortal? Come to see Minerva work her magic, have you?” She showed a wide grin – then her face turned green, and she had to lean against the nearest wall.

“Hurk...”

“Well, I was wondering what in the world you were doing. And why it makes you sick.”

“I’m trying to make garum! A little surprise for my dear partner’s birthday.”

“Garum?”

“It’s a fish sauce.”

“I see... any reason for the fireball? And whatever it is you’re doing?”

Minerva took a deep breath – both to start what would be her explanation, and to recover from her most recent spell of nausea.

“You see, garum needs both sunlight and months of time to ferment.”

“Ferment?” Mana looked at the chopped-up fish. The guts were still in the mix.

“You basically make the fish digest themselves into a slurry. The salt draws out their stomach liquids to do just that.”

“Sounds disgusting.”

“A lot of food preparation is disgusting when you look into it, young mortal!”

Mana didn’t have a counter for that. Images of cheese, sausages, natto and more ran through her mind – and all the production methods she looked up out of curiosity.

“So!” Minerva continued.

“I need sunlight and time, but it’s March, so...” she gestured towards the overcast skies, then to her fireball.

“...I made my own sun.”

Mana nodded. So far, so good. She could follow.

“Time is also a factor, sadly, and I only have until this weekend. It’s already been my partner’s birthday, and I promised her to do something special for her this weekend.”

Mana furrowed her brow.

“Wait, you said it takes months!”

“Correct! So, I’m trying to speed the process up. You see, it appears that I’m a master of healing!”

“I don’t follow.”

Minerva seemed to ponder, then she took a different angle to her explanation.

“Healing is nothing other than time magic. You point at a wound, no matter how grievous, and turn the time back on the tissue. For the same reason I can cast localized stasis. That was my go-to to stop bleeding before I realized I could do more.”

Mana nodded – she didn’t know this woman’s history, but what she explained made sense so far.

“So I thought: What if I use it to accelerate time? I can in theory! But it turns out that simply reversing magic is not the most efficient way to reverse its effects, too. I can only do an hour at once and it wrecks my stomach.”

Minerva let herself fall on her butt, letting out a long sigh as Mana looked at the sorry mixture of salt and fish.

“Well, that’s a tough problem. Wish I could…”

Wait. I can help.

Mana put down her bag and rummaged through the books within. She produced ‘Accelerate Target’ and held it up.

“I can do multiple days at once, if needed!”

Minerva clapped her hands together and got up.

“Oh, my! Young mortal, you’re a witch?!”

Mana grinned and nodded.

“The best there is!”

***

They now worked in tandem. Mana opened Accelerate Target (to the sound of its excited exclamations like ‘Faster, faster!’ and ‘Warping time, miss!’) and pointed her hand towards the jar. Time advanced for a whole day inside the jar. At first the fish were simply drained of their fluids, which soaked into the salt and dissolved it. Minerva opened the jar, stirred, and Mana repeated her spell. Slowly but surely the fish turned into a brown slurry, with scales and bones separating from flesh.

Minerva was absolutely giddy, stirring the contents with every pass and sparing no praise for Mana, making the young girl grin like an idiot. After sixty passes Minerva nodded.

“Well done, young witch! Oh, I never asked your name.”

“It’s Mana. Mana Kanno.”

“Well met, mighty witch Kanno! There is one more step left.”

Minerva extinguished the fireball and walked to a backpack that leaned against the slope of the riverbank. It was somewhat disillusioning to see a Magical Girl use such mundane means of transporting items.

She pulled out some pieces of cloth, a funnel, a bottle and a ladle.

“I need you to accelerate time again or this will take half our lifetime.” Minerva chuckled. She put the funnel into the bottle, laying it out with one of the pieces of cloth. She then opened the jar, and the stench of their work filled the air around them.

It wasn’t a pungent, rotting smell as Mana feared it would be – instead it was like the smell of all the fish used for this little food experiment was concentrated into one super-fish smell. Like they had an entire fish market in a bottle. This lasted until Minerva disturbed the liquid with the ladle and a stinging, fermented smell violated Mana’s nose. The ladle was used to get the brown sludge out of the jar and put on top of the filter.

“Make it flow faster, please,” the red Magical Girl asked, and Mana obliged, even as she fought back tears from the stinging smell.

“Coming right up!”

They worked in tandem again, and with the acceleration spell they saw a quick drip of golden liquid coming from the muddy brown substance in the sheet of fabric.

“Oho! It’s working! Keep going, Mana!” Minerva cheered, pouring ladle after ladle until the cloth was too clogged and had to be replaced.

After 20 minutes of work the entire bottle was filled with an amber liquid. It almost looked like honey, though with a much waterier consistency.

Minerva grinned and pulled a teaspoon from her backpack, pouring a small quantity on it.

“You should have a taste, Mana!”

Mana looked at the liquid on the spoon. Now filtered it smelled a little sweet, but it had the briny, fishy scent of the salty concoction still on it. She wasn’t entirely certain if she wanted to partake in this culinary experiment.

However, Mana Kanno, the great witch of the infinite library wasn’t one to back down after coming so far, so she had a taste after all.

To her surprise it didn’t even taste much like fish. It carried more of a meat taste, with a spicy warmth that carried a salty note much milder than soy sauce.

She raised her eyebrow and looked at the odd Magical Girl in front of her.

“It’s… actually good?”

“Right?” Minerva returned with the smuggest grin imaginable.

***

“So, what are you going to use that garum for?” Mana asked as she watched the Magical Girl gather her things together.

“Hm… I might cook something traditional with it. Also it is a great condiment. You can put it on almost everything!”

“Huh, really?”

“It is primarily used to add salty flavor to things.” Minerva grinned and stared into the distance.

“I’m going to make her day! It’s not every year you turn thirty!”

Mana smiled a little as she watched Minerva’s enthusiasm.

“This person you’re making this for… your partner. She must mean a lot to you.”

Minerva turned around with her smile still on her face.

“Of course she does. I love her.”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Mana’s jaw dropped at that confession.

“Woah!”

“Hm?” Minerva didn’t seem to put nearly as much meaning into those words as Mana.

“Don’t look so surprised. Of course I love her. We share a body. She is me. And I love myself. What kind of woman wouldn’t love herself?”

image [https://i.imgur.com/xVo0VeL.png]

She was back in her home territory, the infinite library. After flipping through her index, she stopped at an entry named ‘translate’.

“This is probably one of the single most important tomes you could find in here.” Portal commented.

Mana blinked and tilted her head.

“Why’s that?”

“Because so far you’ve been lucky, Mana.” Portal said in a low tone.

“This library is endless. So are the alphabets and writing systems in it. You are able to recognize Roman letters, Kana and Kanji, but what will you do if names of tomes are written in Russian? You could probably painstakingly translate the names from the index at home, but once you encounter a writing system not from Earth you will be at a complete loss.”

Mana listened attentively and nodded.

“We should get ‘Translate’.”

Portal didn’t even need to hear a command, he immediately opened a gate to their destination and the girl stepped through. As always, Mana wanted to read the signs between the rooms – but she was rudely interrupted. What looked like a purple tentacle made entirely out of slime rushed her out of the left-side room, slamming into her and tossing her into the adjacent room’s abyss.

She reappeared a second later out of a portal, dropping on her butt behind the bookshelves and peeking around the corner while she rubbed her ribs with a pained expression.

“Ow! What in the world was…?”

She saw a giant mass of purple slime attached to the bookshelves on the side of the room that was facing her. Both shelves and the door in the middle were blocked by the creature. Two golden orbs floated inside its pulsing body.

“Portal, what’s going on here?”

“This is very unfortunate, Mana. An autonomous monster summoning spell must have been created right next to Translate.”

“What are the chances, eh?” Mana joked, making light of the situation.

“One to – “

“Don’t actually say that number.”

***

“If I had to guess I’d say that these orbs are its cores. It will probably die if I destroy them.” Mana observed, still peeking around the corner – as she leaned her head a bit too far, one of the tentacles shot towards her and knocked her hat away. A portal appeared above her head, with the clothing article landing directly on top again as she withdrew back behind the bookshelf and crossed her arms, pondering her predicament.

“You’ve learned to utilize me so fast. You don’t even need an incantation anymore to make me execute your will.”

“Heh. Well, there’s nothing beyond me if I put my mind to it!” Mana puffed out her chest and let out a smug huff.

“Don’t get a big head or your hat will actually fit.”

“Hey!”

“So, do you have a plan?”

“Sort of.”

She pulled out Barrier, Arrow and Blast.

“Ready to protect you, milady!”

Ever since she stored Barrier between her manga collection it took on the personality of a noble knight protecting his sworn liege. It really liked the half-clothed depictions of the Celestial Sisters in particular.

“Do you need to shoot something, Ma’am?” this one was Arrow, speaking with the cadence of a seasoned soldier.

“Blast’em, ahahaha!” Blast was a bit more… simpleminded.

“Alright, listen up: I need all of you in top shape for this.”

***

The wriggling mass kept an ‘eye’ on the opening where it previously noticed the witch. Tendrils extended in the door’s direction, probing along the spines of books, leaving them slimy in the process. As the tendrils slid through the opening and probed around the corner, nothing was there.

A portal appeared in the room, right next to the slime.

“Over here, ugly!” Mana shouted, then she extended a hand.

“Blast!” Just as she spoke her word, a large chunk of slime was blown right out of the creature by an explosive gust of wind. It shuddered and tried to counterattack with three tendrils. They were stopped by three translucent panes of energy, held back just long enough for the witch to blast again and again until the golden orbs were laid bare.

“Arrow!” She shouted and an arrow made from light soared forth, piercing one of the cores. An otherworldly scream echoed through the library’s halls as the orb withered and disintegrated.

The witch grinned, sure of her immediate victory as she turned by ten degrees and fired another arrow at the second core. It, too, withered and disintegrated.

“Too bad for you, you met the mighty witch, Mana Kanno! Bow down and die in front of your queen!”

Nothing happened.

Mana blinked and looked around as the panes of energy protecting her started to crack.

“What’s going on?!”

“Oh no. Look, Mana!”

She looked back to the creature – and surely enough, there was another core.

“Arrow!” She shouted immediately, piercing the orb and destroying it.

“It should be done now!” Her eyes widened as her assumption was proven incorrect. One, then two cores regrew.

“Hate to tell you this, but it appears you need to destroy both at once… and arrow only shoots one projectile at a time. What now?” Portal mumbled from the sling inside her sleeve.

Mana grimaced and threw the slime a glare – then, before her barriers were broken, she ran towards the railing and jumped into the abyss.

***

She fell head-first for a while. She used the time to grab her large index and rifle through its pages, furrowing her brow as she looked for a possible spell to overcome the slimy foe sitting on top of the most precious tome she could get. Finding it bothersome to read upside-down she entered a portal, reversed her direction and firmly planted her feet on a barrier the moment her momentum was cancelled out by gravity.

“Let’s see.”

She flipped the pages.

“Incinerate is out with all the books. And… that thing looks too gooey to burn.”

Flip.

“Berserker. I don’t think raw power would be useful.”

“How about Atomize?” Portal suggested.

“I told you multiple times, I don’t want Atomize. With my luck it will be an atomic explosion right in front of my face instead of disintegrating my target.”

“If you insist.”

Flip.

“Hm… you said I needed to hit both cores at the same time?”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

Mana grinned and tapped on the entry in her book.

“Bring me to the coordinates of ‘Doppelgänger’.”

image [https://i.imgur.com/xVo0VeL.png]

From 125dccd8d10f420100003f8c82saf21: Aranon

Imperial Aranon Script and Vexian Numbers, 666 pages

“This is different.” Mana said as she looked at the plaque.

“Which is also why we need Translate. Otherwise, we won’t be able to read whatever index we might find in this section.”

“Wait, even you can’t read it?”

“I can only read the script that I myself am written in, so I am sadly limited to Roman letters.” Portal seemed genuinely regretful.

“Wait, but you can read coordinates in another script.”

“Coordinates and systems of writing are different altogether. I knew the value of the character you showed me the last time, not its meaning.”

Mana scratched her head and let out a sigh.

“Well, either way… show me where our book is.”

“Shelf on the left, fifteenth from the right, middle.”

Mana went to work and let her finger glide over the spines, counting the books and finally picking up the one Portal pointed out to her.

She couldn’t read the script on it at all or guess as to its meaning. The letters looked like differently shaped fishhooks, whose rotation also seemed to carry meaning.

The writing emitted a faint glow – and as Mana traced the lettering the book started to shake violently, ripping itself out of Mana’s hand and floating mid-air. The witch watched with fascination as the book itself shapeshifted into something else entirely.

The girl who emerged sported burning red hair, a tan to her skin and wore pure white witch robes. All the shapes and details were the same as Mana's own body, but she was completely palette swapped.

Does my grin look that mischievous?

“You… can understand me, yes?” Mana asked carefully.

“Of course. I can do everything you can do, mistress.”

Mana didn’t like the almost sarcastic intonation at the end but brushed her alarming gut feeling aside for now.

“I need your help with a monster.”

***

Mana stepped out of her portal near the slime monster. Her copy followed through a portal of her own. Mana could see copies of her own tomes swaying on slings under the white robes’ sleeves. It didn’t sit quite right with her that this copied Mana had all her abilities.

“Let’s get to work.”

The two of them walked to opposite corners of their current room – then they stepped through portals, ending up in the exact same position in the adjacent room.

““Blast!”” They shouted in synchronicity and large chunks flew away from the creature. Its anticipated retaliation met barriers once more, and as the two cores lay bare the twins dealt with it by shouting ““Arrow!”” together, piercing the spheres without issue. Deprived of cores a shriek emanated from the creature and its body splashed on the carpet as a liquid with no magic to keep its shape intact.

“Well, that was easy.” Mana announced. She walked to the shelf and finally grabbed Translate off it, wiping off all the residual slime from the monster.

“Hello! I am Translate, and I speak all the languages you might encounter in this library! Channel me and you will be able to understand, speak and write them, too.” It sounded like a butler.

Mana looked at her copy from the corner of her eye. The girl held her own copy of ‘Translate’ in her hand which must have appeared spontaneously as the original was bound to Mana.

Mana started to flip through Translate’s pages out of curiosity and heard her own voice speak up.

“Mistress! I would like a reward for my help.” The clone announced.

Mana kept turning the pages absentmindedly before answering.

“Hm? Sure. Want me to put your book somewhere special? Barrier really likes girls in manga. Maybe you’d like something like that, too?”

As she looked up from her book, the other Mana was right in front of her. Mana dropped her book and lifted her hands to try and push the other girl away, but it only resulted in them both grabbing each other’s hands, fingers intertwined, locked in a struggle as the redhead tried to draw close to Mana – with Mana trying her best to push her away.

“What in the world- hey, stop that!” Mana shouted. She felt her hands slipping, and as she looked, they melted together with the copies’ own.

Mana’s eyes went wide. It didn’t hurt, but seeing one’s own body become malleable like that was a shocking sight. As she turned her head towards the other girl, their lips almost touched.

“Mistress… I love you. You are me… I am you… we are… we. We should be… one. I love myself. So much.”

Their lips touched, but it wasn’t a kiss like Mana knew (from innocent internet searches). Their faces started to meld, starting with their noses and their lips, like the girl was sinking into a mirror. Mana struggled, unable to breathe and saw her counterpart’s eyeballs approaching her own.

No… no! Blast!

***

The spell activated, and the two forms were blown away from each other. Mana coughed and hacked as she was able to breathe again, quickly checking her hands to make sure that the two hadn’t been forcefully ‘ripped’ apart, but her body was fine.

“That wasn’t nice, mistress. Arrow.”

Mana’s long sleeve was nailed to the floor by a magic arrow, followed by her other one. The copy straddled her and looked down at her.

“Why deny me?” She asked, putting a finger innocently on her own lips as if in thought.

“We would be so good together. As one being.”

In that moment another portal opened. The weird girl with the eyepatch who intruded in Mana’s bedroom last month poked her head out.

“Mana! Listen to me! We can help you against the slime, so don’t pick up…”

She turned her head to the red-haired ‘Mana’.

“…Doppelgänger.”

She turned her head around to shout into the space behind her portal again.

“Mana! We’re too late. What do we do?”

“Damn it all! Drive her away for now!”

The eyepatch girl nodded and clenched a fist close to her heart. Her hair started to glow in a green color, very similar to the red of Minerva which Mana saw earlier that day. She pulled her eyepatch off and tossed it aside, revealing an emerald crystal in place of an eye. Then she jumped out of the portal and rammed into the white-robed clone, pushing her off Mana before she took the time to pluck the magic arrows out of the ground to allow Mana to move again.

“No, no, no! Who interrupts my time with my mistress?” the red-haired Mana complained, shooting arrows towards the green-haired intruder, who simply deflected them with her bare arms – a faint glow of green energies was visible whenever the girl deflected a projectile to the side, as if she used perfectly timed dense magical energies as a shield.

Finally, someone else left the portal. It was Mana herself – but she appeared to be older. Maybe two years, judging by the additional height.

“What a mess!” the older Mana complained.

“But we can stop her right here and right now by snuffing her out in her own past. Give her hell, Arisu.”

The girl addressed as Arisu nodded and a blade of magic energy appeared from her right wrist, which she used to slash at the clone. The clone though used the skills she knew from Mana and blocked every strike with her mastery of Barrier.

“You… are so close to mistress! Too close!” The clone hissed and used a portal to land on the other side of the room. ‘Arisu’ changed the magic energies she projected and created a green glowing bow in her left hand, drawing its sting with a magic arrow and taking aim.

“It’s no use. Not while she’s prepared to block you with Barrier.” The older Mana stepped next to Arisu and put a hand on her shoulder.

The redhead pointed at the two of them.

“Now I’ve had enough! Mistress denies me and fraternizes with some unknown girl in the future?! I won’t take it. I am Mana. We are Mana! I will erase this nuisance from existence and merge with my mistress, as is my fate!”

With that the redhead slipped away into another portal to an unknown location within the infinite library.

“Mana…” Arisu started.

““Yes?”” both Manas in the room replied. The older one turned towards the younger with some annoyance in her expression.

“She’s obviously talking to me. Be quiet!” She commanded.

When am I growing into such a… difficult person?

“Mana… instead of erasing the clone … did we just give her the idea to prevent my existence in the first place?”

Older Mana turned her head away, not daring to look at her partner. She opened a portal.

“Maybe. Let’s get going.”

“Oh we’re going to have a long talk!” Arisu shouted and followed, though she stopped for a moment, turning towards the younger Mana with an apologetic expression.

“Sorry. Please forget that this ever happened. Again.”

With a quiet hiss the portal swallowed the two strange people again and vanished, only leaving an utterly befuddled Mana behind.

image [https://i.imgur.com/xVo0VeL.png]

She was back in her room. She was one book richer, but also multiple worries. There was a clone of hers out there who wanted to merge with her – who knew to what end? And apparently, she will make a new friend in the future whose whole existence is threatened by said clone, though she’s not sure how that was supposed to play out.

Her heart hammered in her chest and her head spun – then she caught a glimpse of something white outside of her window.

There was her clone – simply staring at her. Mana pointed her hand at the girl, ready to shoot an arrow through the window and her, but the girl only shook her head.

“I will not try to merge with you as long as that girl is out there. She would… complicate things, mistress…”

The girl narrowed her eyes.

“I hated the me who looked at her with those eyes. Until she is dealt with, I will not be Mana anymore.”

Mana blinked, lowering her hand.

“Oh yeah? Who will you be?”

“I will pick a name that also starts with the kanji for ‘demon’, like yours. What about…”

The clone pondered for a moment.

“Marisa. Yes, I think I like that one. Like the witch from the games father plays.” She giggled and simply fell through a portal that appeared under her.

Mana stared at the place where Marisa just sat.

Her ventures into the library may have just become much more dangerous.