6.10 Witches in Time
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← From 076dccd8d10f420133993f8c8bfaf92: Earth
Roman letters, Cyrillic letters, 262 pages
From 076dccd8d10f420133993f8c8bfaf92: Earth
Roman Letters, Cyrillic letters, 263 pages →
Mana left her portal and stepped into the infinite library, looking at a familiar plaque in front of her. Coordinates, writing systems, page numbers - the sorting system of the library in all its glory. Here she would retrieve the first tome she saw inside her first index: Atomize.
She still wasn’t entirely certain whether this atomization was exploding type or the disintegrating type, but today she found the determination to test it out, or, even easier, just ask the tome itself.
“To the left. Opposite side of the room. Shelf to the right of the door, fifth row, thirteenth book from the right,” Portal instructed her, and Mana nodded. She slowly walked towards the shelf and already saw the completed spellbook on the shelf, with its slightly off title, ‘aTomize’, nestled between various nonsense labels. The walk to the book felt like a funeral procession. This library’s funeral, maybe, or Marisa’s, or maybe her own. She couldn’t really tell.
She realized she had been staring at the tome for at least two minutes now and shook her head. She pinched the bridge of her nose, taking a deep breath before she reached out to touch the leather in front of her, though just as she was about to, she withdrew her hand. Nonetheless, the book was already awake.
“At your command, madam. Touch me and I’m yours.”
“Explain your function to me!” Mana commanded quietly, not touching the book as it asked her to do. She could feel some confusion radiating from it, but it answered her inquiry, nonetheless.
“I atomize things,” was the simple answer and Mana let out a long sigh.
“Why are you all so determined to make things harder than they need to be? When you say ‘atomize’, do you mean that your target explodes, or…?”
“No. The process is very calm, actually. My target is reduced to atoms. It’s like crumbling into dust, essentially,” the book admitted, now sounding a little more talkative.
“Can I target anything?” Mana asked next.
“No. I will not atomize living beings of flesh and blood,” the tome stated.
“And spell books?”
“They are animated magic items fed by human souls, madam. It is possible, and it would be a mercy.”
“What about non-living spaces containing living beings?”
“I am not sure what you are getting at, madam.”
Mana took another deep breath before she gestured around.
“For example… if a person is inside this library while I atomize the universe marble containing it, what happens to them?”
Atomize hesitated as if to think the situation over before it responded.
“They would drift in a space beyond space and time, where they are bound to perish within a moment.”
Mana nodded, letting her arms hang by her side and taking a deep breath. She didn’t want to let it come to that, but if she was driven into a corner, this would have to be her desperate measure.
“That will have to do.”
“Aren’t you going to pick me up, madam?”
“I’ll do so later. I can’t have you recognize me as your ‘owner’ just yet, or Marisa will know.”
“Shall we go confront Marisa, then, Mana?” Portal spoke and Mana shook her head.
“One more stop, then we’ll go and find Marisa. There’s something else I’ll have to prepare, first,” Mana spoke quietly, pulling out a vial from her robes. Ruby red. A fake Amaranth potion.
Period of Calm Skies, 1477 in the Era of Plunder
Marisa stepped onto the sandy shores of a desert island. She saw her younger self with an arrow stuck in her chest, currently with her eyes closed. As she stepped closer, the younger girl woke up and grabbed her leg; she couldn’t speak up, not with the projectile penetrating her lungs, at least. But Marisa knew what she wanted to say. She had been in this exact situation one and a half years ago, after all.
Let me die! I hurt Mistress! I deserve this!
Marisa grimaced a short moment, holding her forehead. She remembered those thoughts, and how Doppelgänger immediately suppressed them. How ironic. This past version of her wanted to die, while she wanted to do everything in her power to survive.
“Shush,” she told her younger self, casting a healing spell as she pulled the arrow out of the girl’s chest. She winced a little as the girl screamed in pain. And then she spoke softly to her, assuring her that everything would be alright and one day she would be successful…
***
After the younger one left, Marisa sat on the beach, idly admiring the vial with the potion she stole from the woman called Hitoishi while the younger Marisa distracted her. It was a beautiful color, like ruby. It shimmered clearly in the light of the sun, engrossing her enough that she got lost in her own little world.
“I was wondering how you survived an arrow through the chest back then,” she heard Mana speak behind her and turned her head around.
“You went back in time to tell yourself to stop me from collecting items for the Broker, then you healed your other self after I shot her. Which, in the end, delayed you. Because your true self that isn’t being controlled by that spell book came out when you saved me from Mnemosyne.”
Marisa sighed and stowed the vial before she got on her feet, facing Mana. There was a strange sort of determination in her mistresses’ eyes. It put Marisa on alert.
“Did you come to kill me?” she asked with narrowed eyes, feeling every muscle in her body tense, ready to pounce and attack her mistress to defend her own life.
“I came to stop you. Whether I have to kill you or not depends entirely on you, Doppelgänger.”
You’re not her girlfriend, or her clone. You are a spell book. An object. An object to be tossed away once she’s done with it.
Marisa gritted her teeth and balled her right hand into a fist.
“Letting Hitoishi use that potion will mean Arisu will be born. If you intend to do that, you have already killed me, mistress.”
That was all she intended to say; immediately after, she pounced, readying a Blast spell. Mana appeared to expect this move, erecting a barrier and pushing it Marisa’s way with a Blast spell of her own. Marisa hit the invisible barrier head-on and let out a hiss as Mana vanished through a portal and appeared behind her. Marisa’s sleeve was nailed against the barrier by an arrow, and the next Blast spell would have painfully rammed her into the barrier, potentially knocking her out, if she hadn’t anticipated that move. She turned around, putting Mana in Stasis with a quick shout, then she quickly ripped her sleeve off the arrow while Mana rammed headfirst into the barrier, carried by her jump’s momentum.
Mana let out a pained shout and followed up by attempting a Paralysis spell, but before she could even open her mouth, Marisa used one of her Summons. She extended her hand and Mana’s mouth was sealed shut by a slime shooting from Marisa’s hand, slamming on her face and wrapping around her head.
Her mistress was flailing wildly, scrambling to get the creature off her face while Marisa prepared another spell to hit her: an arrow of light. She’d pay her mistress back in the exact same way she hit her past self. And maybe, if Mistress begged convincingly, she would even save her the same way…
She suddenly fell. A hole opened under her feet, and she landed in white sand; she recognized the place, obviously. Mana must have transported her here with her wordless mastery over Portal. Marisa got up and patted the white sand off her witch robes before she looked towards the large pillar behind her.
Going up into the sky. Time moves backwards here.
She didn’t have much time to contemplate. Mana jumped in after her, pushing her into the ground with a Blast spell. A cloud of sand was kicked up as Marisa rolled over the ground, retaliating by tossing a fireball Mana’s way. Her mistress dodged, even though the explosion tossed her slightly aside, then she sprinted across the sand’s surface to reach Marisa.
She could see her trying to perform the Paralysis spell again, so Marisa quickly erected a barrier and catapulted herself off it with another Blast spell, soaring through the air of the strange world of dilated time towards the rising pillar. Mana attempted to follow, but Marisa noticed something odd: her mistress appeared to be getting slower the further she was away from her.
So this is what it looks like.
Marisa saw the blue glow of an emerging Portal in front of Mana and turned around, greeting her emerging mistress with an arrow while digging her heels into the sand to stop her flight, kicking up a large cloud of white dust towards her emerging mistress. It plinked off a hastily erected barrier, with Mana almost tumbling out of the portal as she flinched at the incoming sand, despite her portal. Marisa immediately followed up, firing a dozen arrows in quick succession and shattering the barrier before she jumped towards her mistress to hit her with a fireball at point-blank range.
However, her mistress already expected her. Marisa’s eyes went wide as she realized that Mana had prepared a Paralyze spell, and quickly aborted her fireball to prepare a countermeasure, but it was too late, or so her mistress would think.
Marisa’s body stiffened, and she tipped over, falling through a portal towards Earth that she had hastily erected beforehand.
November 1485
Wilhelm tossed a quick glance towards the mountain range surrounding the town, which was already white-crowned. It was a little foggy in Innsbruck today, but it was a beautiful city, nonetheless. However, he had little time or cause to admire said beauty, given that it was duty which brought him here. Duty in which he failed, or rather, the inquisitor leading him did.
Wilhelm let out a little sigh and shook his head before opening the door to the inn. He passed by the innkeeper and a few guests, who all quickly averted their eyes. He expected more scorn, but fear and suspicion were all understandable reactions to him, especially after the past three months.
After ascending the stairs, he stopped in front of a door, behind which he could already hear the mutterings of his superior. He knocked on the door and simply entered, without giving the occupant the opportunity to answer the knock with venom.
“Laudetur Iesus Christus!” he greeted the inquisitor, who was bent over his desk and scribbled away while muttering quiet curses under his breath.
Heinrich Kramer, also known under his latinized name Henricus Institoris, was a particularly obsessive inquisitor who spread the will of Pope Innocent VIII or at least tried to. It was almost two weeks ago that his three months of investigation in this place fell apart during the trial of the women accused of witchcraft, yet he still refused to give up, attempting to gather enough evidence for a second trial.
If he didn’t convict anyone in this place of witchcraft, it was like he sat on idle hands for three months, and that was unthinkable for a man of his convictions, least of all after the local womenfolk disrespected him.
“Per omnia saecula saeculorum,” came the answer and Wilhelm dutifully added “Amen,” before the inquisitor started with a question.
“Brother Beringer; did you manage to interrogate some of the burghers as I instructed you to do?” he asked without looking up from his parchment.
“No, Brother. I come bearing a letter from Bishop Georg.”
He heard a little snort from Heinrich after he spoke that name, who put his quill down and turned to face Wilhelm now.
“What does the bishop want, then? Wasn’t it enough that his commissar Turner stabbed us in the back during the trial?”
Wilhelm narrowed his eyes. He thought back to the first day of the trial, where the first accused, a Helena Scheuberin, was being questioned by Kramer.
“I swear, and this is the truth, that I was born and raised in this here town of Innsbruck, where I lived honorably and was married to my husband eight years ago.”
“And you were a virgin until then, of course?”
“Why are you asking that?”
“The husband of a woman you bewitched told me he knew you well before he married her. Now I’d like to ask you: How many men have you been with intimately? What sorts of… acts did you perform with them?”
“Brother Institoris! Cease this line of questioning at once, or, with God as my witness, and the authority as the Bishop’s commissar, I will leave these proceedings in protest!”
That was only the start of how the proceedings were derailed by Kramer’s zeal regarding the fairer sex and their ‘closeness to the devil through their lustful dispositions’. He exaggerated witness testimonies and conducted himself so poorly that a local doctor rose up and acted as the accused’s public defender, who managed to poke holes in the inquisitor’s proceedings. Namely, that he didn’t have a certified notary of the bishopric present during the witness interrogations, and that he arrested the seven women he put on trial before there were even enough accusations. In the end, after three days of proceedings, the accusations were entirely nullified, and the women let go with a light sentence of penance.
I wonder who stabbed us in the back.
“The message is as follows…” Wilhelm pulled the folded and sealed parchment from his cloak and broke the seal, unfolding the letter.
“You are to leave Innsbruck this very moment, by the order of Bishop Gregor. He is also sending a notary with the exact same message to read it out loud and document the occasion so you can’t claim to not have received it.”
“Preposterous!” Kramer shouted immediately, and Wilhelm let out a little groan. He could already imagine that everyone currently inside the building would hear his superior’s ranting.
“It was clear as day! She killed the good knight Spiess with witchcraft! She cursed a woman during her wedding with the words ‘may this be your healthiest and best day’, and in the seven years since, she felt weak and sick! She spurned my sermons that warned of witches, cursed me personally and is a woman of low character! She is promiscuous and has surely fornicated with the devil! She-”
“She walks free,” Wilhelm interrupted the inquisitor. “If we had followed the proper procedures, she might be burning now, but we didn’t, and she doesn’t. I know that this is an affront to God, but we will not serve him by overstaying our welcome and inviting the wrath of the bishop. Let us go elsewhere and pursue others.”
He could see the hesitation in the eyes of his superior, so Wilhelm kept pushing.
“After some time, we can still come back! She will surely have bewitched more people by then, which might be tragic, but so be it if these fools wish to shelter a witch. It will only give us more evidence to work with. So please, Brother Institoris, listen to my words: Let us leave thi- UGH!”
Wilhelm suddenly felt a weight fall on his shoulders, which threw him to the ground. He hit his forehead against the floorboards, and his mind was immediately rattled. The edges of his sight darkened as he realized that a person must have landed on him, but before he could even voice any confusion at this turn of events, he passed out.
***
Mana cursed as she witnessed Doppelgänger simply fall through a prepared portal and immediately set to pursue her. She heard a thud and a crash as the clone’s paralyzed body fell into a wooden room, right on top of a person. She followed and looked around for a moment. The room had a window, from which she could see snow-covered mountains. Multiple peaks along a very long mountainous range, she realized.
That’s not Mount Fuji… or the Japanese Alps. Where are we?
“A witch!!”
The sudden scream tore Mana out of her thoughts, and she turned her head to the side, seeing a middle-aged man with small, beady eyes. His head was shaved in a circle on the top of his head, making his frail figure look even weirder, and he lifted a thin, bony finger to point at her.
“Not only fornicating with the devil, but with wild cats as well! The witches are propagating, their offspring bearing the mark of Lucifer!”
Mana groaned and rubbed her forehead.
“I can see why Inari decided to move East. You people are annoying,” she muttered under her breath and decided to ignore the man with the weird hair for now.
“Portal. When and where is this?”
“We’re still on Earth. November 12th, 1485. Innsbruck, capital of the County of Tyrol in the Holy Roman Empire, both under Habsburg rule.”
“I don’t know what any of that is,” she admitted and Portal answered again.
“Going by modern borders, you are in Austria. In Europe.”
“She speaks in the devil’s tongue as well!” the man shouted again, and Mana looked at him incredulously until realization hit her. Whatever language he was speaking, she could understand and speak it thanks to her tome Translate, but when she talked to Portal, their conversation must have been kept Japanese for any observer.
“You’ve got some nerve to call it that. Leave me alone! I’ll be gone in a minute, and you won’t see me again,” she spoke to him, then she turned around to face Marisa on the ground. Her stiff body was on top of another monk-looking man with the same strange hairstyle, who looked like he had the lights knocked out of him.
“You always cause a mess, wherever you go, Doppelgänger,” she groaned and pointed her hand at the frozen clone. A glowing chain emerged from her hand, and she was about to wrap her up for transport as she was suddenly grabbed from behind. The pathetic man from before wrapped one of his arms around her throat and controlled her left wrist with another.
“This is my opportunity! They can’t deny the existence of witches if I deliver them one with the devil’s mark! They’ll have to respect me, and they will have to see the truth that women are prone to fornicating with the devil and animals alike! Yes!”
Mana struggled; she almost wanted to hit him with one of her spells, but Janus’ warning about getting involved in saving or taking lives in the past rang in her mind. She kept struggling and kicking, trying to find a way to get him off her.
If I can establish eye contact somehow, I can paralyze him…! Damn it, why is there not a single mirror in this room?
She continued her struggle and even attempted to bite him, while he kept cursing, continuing his tirade of accusations concerning intercourse with the devil and whatnot. However, Mana had a different worry right now, aside from being choked.
Crap, how long does the paralyze spell last?
She never froze someone for an extended amount of time before, and as her eyes frantically looked back to the spot there Marisa landed, she only saw the unconscious body of the monk she landed on.
“Keep your filthy hands off Mana!”
The voice came from behind, right before Mana heard a dull thud and the pressure on her throat was gone as the man fell to the side, unconscious.
Mana quickly turned around to face Marisa, who held a heavy handwritten bible in her hand, which she obviously used to smack the strange monk across the head.
“…thank you,” Mana mumbled, though she kept her hands slightly cupped to be able to immediately cast a spell if necessary.
There was pain in Marisa’s eyes. Her true self was briefly in control, Mana realized, but before she could even say anything, Marisa’s facial expression changed into one of rage. She hit Mana with a sudden Blast spell and as Mana hit the wall behind her, Marisa fled through a portal she summoned right after.
“After her! Or we’ll lose her!” Portal shouted and Mana grimaced. She looked at the shrinking Portal and shot herself through it with a Blast spell she aimed behind herself.
***
She landed in the white sand of the familiar desert of time again and found Marisa waiting for her. The clone flung a fireball her way, and Mana had to jump out of the way, erecting Barrier just in time as it exploded, flinging her the way of the large pillar in the distance.
It’s flowing downward. We’re returning to the future.
Mana blinked and used Break to stop her fall and land on her feet in the sand, eyeing Marisa up and down. The witch in white stepped closer again, and Doppelgänger made itself known as the one in control by the cruel smile she wore, licking her lips as she produced multiple tomes from her sleeve.
“You’re determined, mistress! You’re making wise use of your spells! You almost had me there, if that fool hadn’t grabbed you!”
“Who was that anyway? Did we change anything important?” Mana asked Portal, who contemplated the question for a moment. Strangely enough, even Marisa seemed interested in the book’s answer, and she stood still, crossing her arms.
“Heinrich Kramer, an inquisitor. The day we arrived he was ordered to leave the city, as the residents and local clergy had enough of his witch hunts. However, he refused the order, staying for three months longer. His previous zeal for hunting down witches turned into an even worse obsession, and later he would write the Malleus Maleficarum. Over the next three hundred years, over forty thousand people would be executed as witches, following the instructions of that book.”
Marisa let out a loud laugh as Mana turned pale and felt her heart sink in her chest.
“Mistress! You have such a talent for making things worse when you’re trying to make them right! Maybe you truly are a witch who brings misfortune onto all she touches!”
“Shut up!” Mana shouted, shooting an arrow Marisa’s way. She easily deflected it to the side with her Barrier spell, then she giggled.
“So feisty! Mistress is trying to murder me!”
She gestured with the tomes she had pulled from her robes and Mana immediately felt danger. Her cat ears picked up the subtle sound of something moving behind her, and she immediately summoned a barrier to cover her as a Minotaur brought down a large club. It crashed against the barrier, cracking it a little, while the creature blew hot air out of its nostrils.
Another sound and Mana shot herself away again, using Blast. A golem’s fist smashed the spot she just stood in, kicking up a white dust cloud. Finally, a slime attached itself to Mana’s sleeve and stiffened around her right arm, immobilizing it. She grimaced and tried to flex her arm, to maybe break the creature’s solidified body away, but it was no use.
“I think I’ve been playing too nice until now. We will beat you blue and bloody, and then I will lock you away in our hideout! I will take good care of you, I promise! I will bathe you; I will feed you and do all the other things a wife should do for her partner! And some day… we shall merge, as I always intended to do!”
Mana barely avoided another strike from the Minotaur’s club, but as she did so she was struck by the golem’s fist. She felt pain radiate through her brow and a warm trickle flowing down her face as she fell to the ground and was promptly pinned down. She took a quick moment to thank fate that her opponent held back, and her head wasn’t punched clean off as the golem hit her.
“That was almost too easy, mistress! I do wonder if you have some kind of trump card…” Marisa mused, keeping eye contact as she stepped closer, still holding the tomes with which she had summoned her minions.
“No… not Paralyze, you know that if I’m prepared for it, you won’t be able to get it through before I erect a barrier…” she quickly chastised Mana, who had a different idea altogether. She looked intensely at the monster summoning tomes in Marisa’s hand.
“Portal, now!” she shouted, and her companion obeyed. A small hole in reality formed around her wrist, and she grabbed the tome on the other side, somewhere, deep inside the universe marble she still had in her pocket.
She became this book’s mistress in this very moment, not giving Marisa enough time to realize what was happening as a copy appeared inside her robes.
“Atomize!”
Moon of the Murdered Singer, 1067 AR
“I am in a relationship with my own clone, who has the soul of my twin sister.”
Hearing this should have hurt Arisu, who originally stalked Mana to find out whether she already had a girlfriend. However, she knew ever since she had those strange visions. She already made peace with it, and her heart was filled with regret at how she ruined everything for Mana. And despite that, she kept smiling, for the sake of this younger Mana, especially after she just promised that she would forgive Arisu for what she did. Some time, in the future. It was an easily given promise, seeing how the younger Mana didn’t know what awaited her just yet, but Arisu believed her from the bottom of her heart.
“It’s Marisa, yes?” she kept the conversation going.
Mana nodded, then she gestured for Arisu to explain the ‘strangest thing’ about herself. Arisu nodded and pondered.
I am a half ‘god’.
I trained under Hachiman, Japan’s god of war and archery.
We have killed a yokai together.
Despite my powers, I cowered and cried after being bullied.
“I have four mothers!” she picked, showing the confused looking Mana a grin.
“So, you’re adopted? Or your mother joined a big group that’s like a family?” came Mana’s skeptical next question.
“Biologically,” Arisu immediately clarified. “Including their loved one, my number of mothers goes up to five!”
“How does that work?” Mana asked, sounding a little annoyed, and Arisu felt a little bit more comfortable being mischievous in response.
“You want to know how I was made? I told you that sexual harassment isn’t allowed!”
“You’re a mischievous one, aren’t you?”
Arisu shared a little laugh with the younger Mana as they kept walking towards Auntie Nicola’s castle.
On the way, she thought about her mothers’ marital situation. Would she be okay with a similar arrangement, maybe? Marisa looked like Mana in different colors, and she would be lying if she said that the thought didn’t excite her a little bit. She shook the lightly improper thoughts off, instead closing her eyes to think about her friend.
Mana… I hope you’re safe. And I hope that you can save Marisa.
???
“What have you done? No… no!!”
Mana didn’t know what she expected from her risky gambit, but it wasn’t this. Marisa, controlled by Doppelgänger, knelt on the ground and wailed as her monster summoning books slowly disintegrated in her hands.
“You killed them…! You killed ‘Summon Minotaur’! ‘Summon Slime’! ‘Summon Golem’!” she shouted, and Mana slowly rose to her feet. The slime that kept her right arm straight fell off in thick pieces, dried out and dead. The golem that pinned her to the ground before slowly turned into sand, becoming one with the surrounding white mass while staining it in a slightly brown-orange hue, and the minotaur sat on the ground, motionless.
Destroying the books was like plucking the soul from them.
“I knew it… I knew it, knew it, knew it!! Mistress doesn’t care. She doesn’t see us as living beings! She sees us as things she can use and toss aside! And she used us a lot! But she doesn’t need us anymore! She has Arisu, after all!” Marisa rambled and looked manic. Her eyes were bloodshot from the endless stream of tears, but she suddenly stopped, wiped the tears off and showed Mana a creepy grin.
“If mistress doesn’t want us, then we don’t want mistress, either.”
Marisa launched herself towards Mana with surprising speed. Mana crossed her arms in front of herself, but she got the wind knocked out of her immediately as Marisa went under her guard, hitting her in the stomach with her fist.
Mana stumbled back and was immediately launched by another Blast spell, sending her flying through the desert of flowing sands. Marisa launched herself the way Mana did before and was soon straight above Mana, looking at her with a manic grin. Mana was still reeling from the first attack, so she had little to offer to defend herself as Marisa launched her through yet another open portal with a Blast spell.
***
June 1908
Mana braced herself for a hard landing, covering the back of her head with her arms and even deploying her Barrier spell, but she soon realized that she wasn’t launched into an enclosed space. As she felt a heavy draft pass her and tug on her wide witch robes, she slowly opened her eyes and had a look around.
She found herself falling out of the sky from an incredible height. Down below were an expansive forest that stretched from one horizon to the other and a river, and while she was too high up to make out the details, she could tell that it was a rather homogenous forest, too.
From what she could tell it was early in the morning, with some stars still twinkling overhead as the sun had already risen in the East.
A white hat passed her by, spinning and accelerating, then fluttering as its broad side caught wind resistance, signaling the arrival of its usual wearer. Mana grimaced as she faced Marisa, who summoned a fireball into her hand and raised it above her head, ready to throw it Mana’s way. Mana immediately summoned a fireball of her own into her hands, ready to counter her clone’s attack if necessary.
“Let us burn, mistress! Let us become a brilliant falling star! If you’re so set on killing me, on tossing me aside, it would bring me immeasurable pleasure if we died together!” Marisa shouted.
She tossed her fireball, and so did Mana. The two orbs of magic fire collided and mingled, feeding into each other and growing while continuing their descent towards the ground with the two witches. Mana immediately noticed that something was wrong. The colliding fireballs gave off a strange, shifting light and their magic felt unstable. The combined flames swelled to a much larger size than they should, and soon Mana noticed that its expansion wouldn’t stop.
Marisa laughed maniacally, throwing her arms wide as if to embrace being swallowed by the giant sphere, but Mana wouldn’t have it. She quickly summoned a portal to pull Marisa away from the fireball and erected a barrier that encased the two of them, just in time.
On the morning of June 30th, 1908, a second sun rose above the Siberian Taiga, bathing it in a warm light before it ripped apart violently, and shook the very foundations of the Earth.
***
Mana woke up with a violent cough and opened her eyes. She saw the aftermath of the unstable fireball collision above her, in the shape of a large, billowing cloud that seemed to stretch all the way to the edge of the atmosphere. There were multiple thicker sections in the cloud that rose up in mushroom shapes, indicating that there had been multiple smaller explosions before a bigger, cataclysmic one.
She groaned as she slowly stood up, and wooden debris fell off her robes as she did. She found herself at the center of a ‘crater’. The ground was untouched, but as far as the eye could see, pine trees had fallen over or snapped in two, away from an epicenter, in which she stood. Their needles had all been blown away by the gust, only leaving behind the brown and charred black scenery in front of Mana’s eyes. Marisa was nearby, lying on top of a large log and looking at the sky, laughing.
“See what we can do together, mistress! We illuminate the whole world or shake it to its very core! Just the way I like it!”
The clone rose to her feet, a little shaky, then she pointed at Mana, slowly stepping closer.
“I will have you, Mistress, but first I will have my revenge for my brothers! For the tomes you murdered!”
Marisa reached into her robes, producing a vial filled with a ruby liquid. She then produced a tome with her other hand, which Mana quickly identified as Marisa’s copy of Atomize.
The spellbook was out for revenge, as she didn’t even wait to taunt Mana, or to threaten her with what she was about to do; she simply pointed her hand at the ruby-colored vial, disintegrating it with cruel intent before she cackled loudly.
“I did it! I made sure that Arisu will never exist! And there was nothing you could do to stop me! All your struggling, all your pain, all the deaths you caused in human history this past hour – it was all for nothing!”
“Why didn’t you destroy it right after getting it, anyway?” Mana asked, and her calm demeanor caught Doppelgänger entirely off guard.
“Uh, because… I wanted to… why didn’t I…?” Marisa stammered, staring into the distance. Then it was as if her senses came back to her, and her head snapped around, focusing Mana with wild eyes.
“Wait a minute! Why aren’t you bothered at all?!”
Mana sighed and pulled the proper potion from her robes. Blood-red and thick, compared to the ruby-looking fake tincture Marisa just disintegrated.
“Between the two of us I’m the only one who ever saw the Amaranth potion, so it was easy to trick you. We’re time travelers, you moron! Did it never occur to you that if you go back in time to swap something out, I could simply do the same, just a little earlier?”
“Liar! Liar, liar, liar!! Why would you bother coming after me if you already fixed the timeline?!” Marisa shouted, and her eyes looked like they were getting bloodshot with rage.
Mana looked at her with a sorrowful expression and choked back a few tears as she made her confession to her clone – her girlfriend.
“Because it was never about the potion, Marisa… it was about you. You would keep coming for Arisu’s life and never try to find common ground. I wanted to find a way to help you. Or to stop you, by any means necessary…”
She could see Marisa’s face shift, like her true self was fighting the spell book that created her. She grabbed her head and screamed, falling on her knees. Her fingers dug into the ground, and for a moment it looked like Marisa might have won out over Doppelgänger. Mana slowly stepped closer, trying to reach out to her, but before she got to do it, Marisa lifted her head again. It was Doppelgänger’s hateful visage that stared back at her.
“Not if I kill you first, mistress!” the clone yelled and jumped towards Mana, with her hands reaching for her mistresses’ face to gouge her eyes out, but she never reached the place Mana stood in. Marisa’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second before she vanished entirely inside a portal that Mana summoned to defend herself.
Usually this would be no problem for Marisa. However, …
***
Marisa felt weightless. Mere moments ago, she was in the burned wastes of the Siberian Taiga after the fireball’s violent explosion, and now she found herself in a strange void, filled with a blue, glittering fog. Familiar bookshelves and books floated everywhere around her. This was a place she was intimately familiar with but warped beyond recognition; the place she was born in: the library.
She looked around and found an opening to the usual infinity of the library far above her, looking like a hole leading out of this void.
“Silly mistress… transport me somewhere with a portal and I’ll just come back through another,” she mused and gestured to do just that, but she bumped into something. She looked behind herself and saw one of the floating books, which suddenly glowed in a bright orange color and swelled in size.
“What the-”
Marisa didn’t get to finish her expletive. The book exploded violently, flinging Marisa through the blue void. Where the explosion toucher her, her body tingled, and her witch robe as well as her skin was first burned, then stained blue. A chain reaction followed, and she screamed as she was caught between various exploding books and their colorful, lingering effects.
***
Mana quickly closed her portal and fetched the marble containing the library’s universe from her robes, tossing it on the ground. A few more portals retrieved all of her tomes from the future library, where she had stored them to access their powers by utilizing Portal, and they fell on the ground, quietly observing as the witch pointed her hand at the universe marble.
Atomize!
Speaking that word would disintegrate the library and everything it contained. Marisa would float in a void smaller than even electrons and soon perish, and all the magic books trapped inside would be gone for good. They would never trap a soul inside anymore, and those which already contained a soul would finally be free to be reborn as a person.
She only had to say the word. She only had to destroy the library and kill Marisa. She would be a hero, she would have protected Arisu, she would have…
She was crying, she realized. She fell on her knees, with her hand still pointed at the marble and started to audibly sob. Her tomes, her companions, still only bore silent witness. They didn’t judge her, nor did they push her in a certain direction; they would accept whatever their mistress would decide was right, and she was glad for it, because only a single voice telling her to ‘do it’ could have pushed her over the edge.
Mana looked at the marble through her blurred vision, and, finally, lowered her hand.
“I can’t… I can’t kill her!” she forced through tears.
“She has fled already, anyway,” Portal spoke quietly. “Don’t blame yourself, Mana. I wouldn’t have done it either if I were in your shoes.”
Mana took a deep breath and nodded.
“I think I know where she’s going next. But first, I’ll have to return to my past self and give her a little pep talk.”
Moon of the Murdered Singer, 1067 AR
“Healing, please!” Mana greeted Lithael, the elven healer in Romystedt castle’s infirmary. The long-eared woman raised an eyebrow at Mana and let out a long sigh before she walked over to her. First, she wiped away the blood streaming over Mana’s face from where the golem cracked her skin above her brow, then she wiped away the half-dried tears of the exhausted looking witch, and, finally, she applied some healing magic.
“How many times have I stitched you up by now, Mana? Especially seeing how you have cat ears, so you’ve probably been here a few more times in your future, hm?” she complained quietly, and Mana gave her an awkward grin.
“I appreciate it every time. But I’m going to have to ask you to teach me your healing spell,” Mana calmed the elf’s worries, who gave her a little smile.
“Hmm, but if I teach it to you, I won’t get to see you as often anymore! Oh well, I’ll teach you, but you’re still welcome here. I’ll make your little boo-boos all better whenever you need me,” Lithael said with a wide grin.
“You’re talking to me like a child,” Mana grumbled.
“You are a child! Just because you’ve seen things you shouldn’t have and experienced more than most people would in a lifetime doesn’t mean you’re suddenly walking among us adults!”
“Point taken,” Mana grumbled again, then blinked as Lithael patted her head and planted a little kiss on her forehead.
“There, all better.”
“Do you kiss all your patients?”
“I only kiss the boo-boos of children away.”
“I think you’re lying. Miss Takeuchi was telling a story at her wedding how you invited her and Miss Hitoishi to a threesome.”
“You shouldn’t know words like that at your age, young witch. Those are adult words.”
“Screw you, Lithael.”
The two shared a short laugh before Lithael moved to her bookshelf and handed Mana a tome. Mana realized that the elven healer was ramping up the teasing after seeing her tears at the beginning, and she appreciated Lithael’s efforts to take her minds off her worries.
“Here. It’s the universal healing spell I use most of the time. It won’t make you a full-fledged healer who can cure any and all diseases, but you’ll be able to pull people from the brink of death, at the very least.”
Mana nodded and stowed the tome to study it later, then she waved the healer goodbye and walked through the corridors of the castle. She passed by the guest room with the fireplace and heard Momo’s sobbing inside. She glanced towards the door and bit her lower lip. Even though she protested at first, she quickly warmed up to the idol’s friendly interactions, and the woman quickly became sort of a doting aunt, if not an outright friend to Mana, so seeing her like this hurt Mana.
So many more people than just Miss Hitoishi and Arisu depend on the plan with the potion going well. I won’t disappoint them.
***
Mana ascended the spiral stairs to Nicola’s workshop, letting out a quiet sigh. Her mind was racing with possibilities. The next time she saw Marisa, she would need a plan to save her properly, or she would have to steel her resolve and bring it to an end. She didn’t like that option, so her mind kept racing, trying to find possibilities to bring everything to a proper conclusion without making any sacrifices.
As she approached Nicola’s workshop, she heard her own voice through the door.
“But… that means Marisa is going to die so that Arisu can be born!”
Mana remembered. She felt hope draining from her after learning that Arisu was Marisa’s reincarnation. She already thought she’d have to kill the past Marisa at this point and was on the brink of despair. Mana stepped inside and answered her younger self’s worries with reassurance.
“That won’t be an issue, trust me.”
She walked inside the study and sat down on one of Nicola’s comfortable chairs as her younger self looked on in disbelief. She glanced over to the stack of books that was prepared by Nicola.
“Ah, I remember learning those. Very good, they will be useful.”
“Mana!” she heard Arisu’s voice, and her friend quickly embraced her tightly, before a strange tingle went through Mana’s spine as the girl couldn’t keep her hands off her tail. She kind of liked Arisu embracing and touching her, she realized – or rather, she remembered it, now that the obsessive lust for Marisa that gripped her for the past months for some strange reason finally subsided. Once again, she felt love for Arisu, not just confusion. She continued to speak to her younger self.
“…in my future, Marisa was imprisoned until after Arisu was born. Which means that time or dimension travel must be involved in how she will die.”
“But the possibility exists that she will die during her fight with you, now that you both have traveled back in time,” Nicola spoke up.
“Don’t say that!” Mana responded to Nicola, maybe a little more aggressive than she intended. The woman immediately looked at her with an apologetic expression.
It is true, though. If I don’t find a way to make it work somehow.
“What happened to you anyway?” the younger Mana asked. “You were late, and you look like you went through hell.”
Mana’s mind reflected on her strange, much too exciting day spent in other eras of Earth’s history. She hadn’t yet realized what she did with that giant explosion, so she responded with the other, in her mind more significant event.
“I think I might have started the witch hunts in old Europe.”