Moon of the Light Elves, 1067 AR

  ***

  Mana straightened her witch robe, casting a glance at the bed where Marisa was lying with a wide grin, covered by the blanket.

  She went much farther than she intended to, and she knew exactly who to blame. Her personality merging with a hypersexual pirate from the past pushed her to do things she wouldn’t even have dreamed of doing just yesterday. The fact that she did it with herself, technically, made her feel like a narcissist as well.

  “I’m going to talk to the Broker. You can sleep a little more.” She announced to Marisa, who showed a pout.

  “Boo, mistress. Do you really have to? Forget about your stupid little collection and spend some more time with me, instead,” Marisa complained.

  “You know why I’m doing this. And I know that you will try to distract me from it. But it doesn’t matter; I will save Arisu, and you. Both of you.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible, mistress.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “I don’t know. I have a gut feeling that you will have to choose one of us. And I intend to have you pick me.” Marisa said, hiding her face under the blanket.

  “I’m not going to choose. I’ll be greedy, as befits a Pir-”

  Mana blinked and stopped herself momentarily, holding her head with a sigh.

  “…as befits a Witch Queen.”

  With that Mana stepped out of the backroom into the main one and sat down opposite the Broker.

  “Finished?” she asked in a teasing voice.

  “Multiple times.” Mana answered with Bonnie’s suggestive wit – which appeared to amuse the silver-haired woman – she even seemed to take it as a challenge.

  “Oh, my! Then, might you be looking for magic to enhance your love life as your newest reward?” she spoke with the cadence of a door-to-door saleswoman.

  “I have various spells I can teach you! For example, I am in possession of a spell which allows a woman to grow a-”

  “Sorry, forget it! We only kissed!”

  Mana turned red and shouted to interrupt the Broker, who stifled a laugh, hiding her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “Forgive me, I had to tease a little.”

  She leaned forwards and pierced Mana with her gaze.

  “Let’s have a chat about all the things I promised to tell you.”

  ***

  “After your experience, tell me: what is on your mind, young Witch Queen?”

  There was a long silence in the room as Mana sorted her racing thoughts. She thought back to the most horrifying aspect of her recent experience.

  “…after I die… will I have to watch the next person’s life? Helplessly, like Bonnie?”

  “Bonnie? Oh, so that’s her name…” the Broker commented, rubbing her chin. Then she looked Mana in the eyes.

  “No. After death, only oblivion awaits us. We enter the great dreamless sleep. Our shades might still watch over our next lives, but they are unthinking, unaware. The next you, the true you, will be awake in their new body, entirely ignorant of their previous life.”

  “Then what happened to Bonnie?” Mana asked quietly.

  “Immortality.”

  A pregnant silence hung in the air, as the Witch Queen and the Broker simply looked into each other’s eyes. Mana opened her mouth to say something, but every thought she had was too fleeting for her to form a sentence out of. The Broker broke the silence.

  “What is immortality, really?”

  The Broker turned on her chair, pulled a heavy cleaver out of a drawer and held it up high in her right hand.

  “The classical sense means someone who doesn’t die of old age, like the elves. Is that immortality? Or maybe someone…”

  Mana wanted to shout as she saw movement, but her scream was stuck in her throat. The cleaver rushed down and separated the Broker’s hand from her wrist. Blood pooled onto the table, gushing out in sync with the adult woman’s heartbeat.

  “…who can recover from any damage and won’t die from mortal wounds. Maybe that kind of immortality?”

  Just as she said so, the bone, muscles, skin and blood vessels of her stump grew back, into the proper shape of a hand, which she clenched after. The separated hand and the blood on the table turned black and blew away as ash.

  Mana still watched speechlessly, looking up at The Broker, who used her new hand to pat the girl’s head.

  “None of it is true immortality – that one lies within the soul. It passes, from world to world. Back and forward in time. Some scholars propose that there is only one soul, cycling through each and every life in this vast multiverse – and once its journey is finished? Once it has experienced everything? Who knows! Maybe it will start over. Maybe it will emerge as a god in an even higher plane of existence. But that would take an awful lot of time. Multiple infinities of time, to live every single life in every one of our infinite worlds.”

  The Broker paused for only a moment.

  “Whatever the truth is, the soul is immortal. And this is what the Amaranth does: It unlocks the soul’s previous memories. It makes you realize your own immortality.”

  Mana stared at the woman and her regrown hand, opening and closing her mouth like a goldfish. She simply gave up, staring at the floor as her thoughts kept racing.

  “You’re…”

  “Cursed,” came the simple answer from the silver-haired beauty.

  “It has its uses, like when I get into a fight that I can’t win without a few losses of my own, but don’t be tricked into thinking that a forced long life and an inability to die from wounds is a blessing, young Witch Queen.”

  The Broker got up from her seat, grabbing the pouch full of Amaranth seeds.

  “Come, Mana. There is a task I have for you. We may continue while we work.”

  ***

  Nicola stepped outside the hovel, taking in the view of the magnificent city on the other side of the river, and pointed at the castle.

  “Portal. Can you take us to the topmost room of that tower over there?” she asked.

  “Uhm. Certainly! If Mana wills it, that is.” Portal answered.

  “It’s alright.” Mana patted the book inside her sleeve and looked towards the castle on the green mountain.

  With a thought, a portal into the uppermost room of the tower opened.

  “Very good! I’ll see you there.”

  Nicola vanished in a swirl of shadow, only to appear on the other side of Mana’s portal, waving at her.

  “…couldn’t you just use mine?”

  “I could,” she admitted with a smile and a shrug. “But that’s not as much fun, now, is it?”

  Mana sighed and stepped through the portal to join the strange woman.

  “So, what are we doing here?”

  Mana took in the room’s appearance: it was a spacious workshop. A large woodworking table stood against a window that oversaw the city directly, offering a breathtaking vista for whoever was sitting down and working here. Currently the table was being misused, with a magical device vaguely resembling a Bunsen burner and several strange glass bottles and tubes being connected in an elaborate construction, like an overexaggerated chemistry kit right out of an anime.

  “We will create a potion. But there are two problems with that.”

  Many cocked her head and sighed.

  “And what are those problems?”

  Nicola turned around and waved at Mana with her new hand.

  “As you saw, when I regenerate, my old flesh and blood simply disappear. Which poses a problem, because this potion we are brewing requires my blood. And for this first problem…”

  Nicola grabbed a book out of a nearby shelf. Mana saw many other books in different languages on it, with colorful strips of paper sticking out of them to mark pages and passages. She recognized that some of these books were from her own world, but she didn’t have the time to find out which exact texts they were as Nicola pushed the retrieved book into her hand.

  “This is ‘Stasis’. A very practical spell. It can stop bleeding in wounds, freeze an enemy, and so on – and for our use case today, it will stop my wound from closing.”

  Mana blinked and looked at the woman.

  “You’re just giving me that?”

  “Consider it your advance payment for your help during this task.”

  Mana nodded and looked at the book.

  “I’ll need time to learn.” She looked up at Nicola, who smiled and simply sat down on one of armchairs placed near the little ‘library’ and gestured for Mana to do the same.

  “You’ll find it more easily digestible than ‘Trace’, I assure you.”

  Mana sat down and tilted her head before she cracked open the book and scanned its contents. She flipped through the pages, one by one.

  Nicola was right - this was a much simpler spell than the intricacies of Trace, which had to analyze and recreate the specific workings of any and all spells it encountered. In comparison, the act of stopping time in a small area was child’s play.

  As if Nicola noticed her progress, she grabbed a coin out of her pocket and flicked it into the air.

  “Stasis!”

  Mana reacted without thinking. The addictive feeling of magic coursing through her veins and materializing as a force violating the laws of physics sent a tingle down her spine – and so did the sight of the motionless coin suspended in the air.

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  “My! Congratulations, young Witch Queen.” Nicola said as she got back up.

  “…you learned your second spell through your own power.”

  After learning her spell, Mana had to take position next to the workbench, looking around.

  “What do you do here, anyway?”

  “Usually? I carve.” Nicola produced a talisman from under her clothes and held it up. “Trinkets like these, carved from magically infused wood from your world. And… other things. But more about that another time.”

  She stowed the trinket away again, then she gestured to the series of tubes and flasks.

  “Now, young Witch Queen, I think you own a spell book you rarely use: ‘Accelerate Target’?”

  Mana nodded in response.

  “Good. The second problem I mentioned is that this potion needs to be brewed for a decade. We have…”

  She hesitated and thought about it for a moment.

  “They wanted to bring her here in a month, yes. Let us finish today, though.”

  Mana blinked and looked at Nicola for a long time.

  “Who are ‘they’? Who is ‘her’?”

  “Not important for you right now. Concentrate.”

  Nicola tossed a mask Mana’s way and put one on herself before she removed a cork from one of the flasks and added a funnel.

  “Let’s not remember any more of our past lives, yes?” she said with a wink to Mana, who put her mask on. A moment later the precious Amaranth seeds were added to the flask, filling it with a yellow fog before Nicola added a clear fluid. Mana could tell from the smell that it must have contained something strongly alcoholic – and also something very pungent. It dissolved the dust-like seeds and trapped them in yellow-brownish fluid.

  “Now the hard part. We need to brew this and accelerate it, so a decade passes – all this while we prevent my wound from closing after I added the blood. It should lose its connection to my immortal body after the mixture has set. Your role is to do both of these things while I add the ingredients.”

  Mana nodded, pulling out ‘Accelerate Target’ and readied herself.

  “One more thing.” Nicola added, and Mana tilted her head to listen to her.

  “Immortality isn’t my only curse. There is another one, more recent. As recent as last year, in fact. You asked me why I can’t do my collections myself – now it’s time to learn why.”

  Mana nodded again and listened intently to Nicola. She felt a bit like a bobblehead with all the nodding she did today.

  “This more recent curse prevents me from directly working towards undoing a wrong I’ve committed. So, I’ll be in tremendous pain throughout the entire process while visions of guilt and regret beset me. I’d be in your debt if you could… make it quick.” She said with an awkward smile. Then she grabbed a carving knife from her table and pulled it across her arm.

  ***

  Blood gushed out and Nicola squeezed desperately to get an adequate amount into the flask. The mixture turned a dark shade of red with the added blood.

  “Now!” she shouted as the wound visibly closed again and the first drops of blood vanished right out of the mixture. Mana extended her arm and pointed at the wound.

  “Stasis!”

  The wound stopped bleeding and closing itself both – yet Nicola still appeared to be in pain. Beads of sweat ran down her forehead as she rushed to turn on the flame and adjusted the strength, then she nodded to Mana.

  “Accelerate it… two years.”

  Mana obeyed and invoked ‘Accelerate Time’ to speed up the time experienced by the alchemy kit.

  Nicola groaned audibly and halfway slumped over the table. She grew pale, forcing herself back up by supporting her weight with both her arms. She grabbed a strange leaf from a little drawer.

  “…how long?” she asked with a hoarse voice.

  “Fifteen seconds and it’s been two years!” Mana responded, now watching the woman with a terrified look.

  Nicola nodded, visibly counting the seconds with her lips as she opened another flask.

  The liquid in the first boiled, bubbled, evaporated and collected in another vessel in the span of mere seconds, changing its color to a deep blue.

  “Now!” Mana stopped her spell and Nicola opened another flask, throwing in the leaves before adding another alcoholic-smelling mixture before she closed that flash as well. She adjusted the flames and turned a few valves, slowly, as if even those movements were painful to her.

  As she was done, she collapsed on the ground, clawing at the floorboards.

  “It’s... up to you now, Mana. Keep accelerating until the color changes.”

  Mana nodded and accelerated time again, keeping an eye on the kit.

  It felt like an eternity. The strange leaf visibly decomposed into the fluid before it boiled, and the vapors entered the flask with the blood and Amaranth solution. The mixture didn’t change at all, even as Mana accelerated through the years – and her perception of the passing minutes was worsened by the unsettling sounds coming from Nicola. The cursed woman shivered, clawing at her own arms and shaking her head. Mana had to focus hard to not let it break her concentration, keeping up both the stasis on Nicola’s cut as well as the time acceleration.

  “I’m sorry... I’m sorry... I’m so sorry!” she could hear from the ground, though she wasn’t certain if Nicola was talking to her.

  “I should have left you behind... I alone should be an immoral woman, no better than a whore. You would have hated your marriage, but you would have been alive... you would still be whole...”

  Mana didn’t even dare look at the woman on the ground. She only ever knew her as a confident, ever teasing woman who was always in control. To hear her begging for the forgiveness of an unseen person was unsettling.

  “I’m so sorry, fair lady! I defiled your gift, despite my promise! I deserve death by your blade!”

  Minutes turned to ages in the small workshop as Mana kept accelerating and stopping time simultaneously, with only the broken woman’s desperate pleas breaking the silence.

  Mana came back out of her portal and handed Nicola a bottle of water she hastily got from a vending machine. The silver-haired woman took it with a grateful expression, quickly unscrewing the cap and gulping down the contents.

  “Thank you, Mana.” She leaned back into her seat and took deep breaths. She was utterly drenched in sweat, making her white blouse and her hair stick to her body, and her face was pale, with bloodshot eyes, which matched her crimson irises.

  As far as Mana could tell, Nicola didn’t cry, even though she was desperately begging someone for forgiveness, as if she couldn’t.

  “I’d recover on my own in a few hours even without all this care, but still... thank you.”

  Nicola reached out and patted Mana’s head, smiling at her, then she looked at the alchemy kit and approached. The flask was filled with a crimson liquid, similar to blood, but clearer. Nicola drained it into a glass vial she produced and sealed it.

  “Finally… with this I can undo it all.”

  After sealing it in a small chest she kept on her workbench, she turned around to Mana, back to her old self despite the sweat and the pale complexion.

  “Now... do you have a question for me, still?”

  ***

  They returned to the hovel – despite Mana’s protest that she wanted to see more of the castle, Nicola kept insisting that it wasn’t yet the time for her to see it.

  “First off... what would you like me to unlock?” Nicola grabbed a handkerchief and wiped some rests of sweat off her brow.

  “Uh... science, I guess?” Mana hated to admit it, but she was less interested in holding up her unspoken promise to the Aranon than finding out more about the mysteries right in front of her.

  Nicola didn’t seem to particularly mind, grabbing the tear out of Mana’s hand and performing the same ritual she did with it a few times before – then she handed it back to Mana, together with a new crystal full of data.

  Mana took a deep breath, then she finally voiced her question.

  “How can I fix Marisa? She still hears Doppelg?nger in her mind, and it could make her turn violent at any moment…”

  Nicola looked troubled by the question.

  “It’s hard to say if there even is a solution. Doppelg?nger’s entire drive is to merge with and override its caster, while Marisa loves you. Her dislike of this other girl you mentioned, however, appears to be highly unusual… maybe I’ll talk to her and try to get to the bottom of it, but I don’t have an answer for you as of now.”

  Mana nodded, looking at the ground for a while before she looked back at Nicola.

  “Those things you said earlier…”

  “No.” The refusal came promptly, but the woman didn’t lose her smile.

  “You shouldn’t burden yourself with that knowledge, Mana. I already have someone in mind to work with me on resolving my own problems. You’ve already done so much; it would be unfair to demand more.”

  Mana looked at the ground, feeling dejected.

  “Then what can I do?”

  “The same as always: collect spells for me. I need them by next month.”

  “So they are actually necessary to solve your problem?”

  Nicola nodded.

  “They are for a pair of magic-less girls who so dearly wish to protect the world and those they love.”

  Mana raised an eyebrow.

  “Can’t you just teach them spells, like you did with me? Have them read those tomes and study the incantations?”

  “Ah, but Mana, you are talking from a position of privilege!”

  Nicola stepped closer and ran her hand through Mana’s azure hair, pulling a few strands of it into view.

  “You are brimming with latent magic. Only you are able to cast spells from your own power. You were born into a world which had magical energies leaking into it and were changed.”

  She let go of Mana’s hair.

  “There are three levels of magic talent in your world. The first one, the most ubiquitous, being people without magical ability whatsoever.”

  Mana had to concede this point. If there were more people who could use magic, then that would have definitely made itself known after the Kawaguchi Incident.

  “The second category is people with the ability to wield magic, but no means to generate it. They are the ones in your world who become ‘Magical Girls’, as visitors from other worlds pick them as vessels, or as bearers of magic foci, either as an act of philanthropy, or to further their own agenda.”

  Nicola appeared amused now.

  “Everyone is copying that one Magical Girl who was first: Minerva. Easier to do that than to introduce wholly new concepts to a world. And after the first ones copied Minerva, the next ones copied those who came after.”

  Mana furrowed her brow and scratched her head in response.

  “And lastly, the ones at the very top: Humans who can wield and produce magic. In your world that is those who were born after the worlds overlapped. Before that incident, you would have been born a person with the ability to wield magic, but without the means to produce it.”

  Mana looked at her hands. Her birth at the right time in the right place was a miracle which allowed her to be a bona fide witch, but there was something gnawing at her.

  “I’m still mutating… I don’t know where it will end. It scares me a little.”

  Mana looked up at Nicola, who rubbed her chin in contemplation.

  “Let me have a good look at you, Mana.”

  The woman kneeled down in front of Mana and looked her in the eyes, tilting her head from side to side. She placed a hand on mana’s forehead and let out a little ‘hmm’.

  “You have one stage left. It’s not going to be debilitating, but you will be… different.”

  Mana shivered a little at the thought.

  “What’s there left to change? My skin color? My voice?”

  “We’ll have to wait and see, young Witch Queen.”

  Nicola patted Mana’s head again and offered her a smile.

  “I can assure you that it will look good on you, though.”

  Mana narrowed her eyes and stared at Nicola for a long time after that strange statement.

  “You know what I’m going to look like!”

  Nicola only replied with a grin, turning away from her.

  “Yes. And you will be very cute, rest assured.”

  Mana sighed as she entered the backroom. Marisa sat on the bed, letting her legs dangle off the edge as she stared holes into space. She only perked up as she noticed Mana, smiling and hurrying to her side, greeting her with a kiss.

  “Mistress!”

  Mana didn’t resist her, embracing her instead before they separated.

  “Marisa… I know you think that I have to choose. But will you assist me instead? I promise you I’ll find a way to make it work for both you and Arisu. I know you’re better than this.”

  The redhead turned her face away for a moment – various thoughts were going through her mind, it appeared.

  “If you think you can… I want to trust you, mistress.”

  Mana reached out to caress Marisa’s cheek with a little smile.

  “Thank you. But one more thing, Marisa!”

  The clone blinked and tilted her head, looking Mana in the eyes as she waited for what she had to say.

  “I am not ‘mistress’ to you. It’s ‘Mana’.”

  Marisa squirmed in place, looking a little uncomfortable. Her eyes shot from side to side, and she reached under her witch hat to scratch her scalp.

  “I’ll… I’ll try. Mis… M… Mana.”

  Marisa stammered, fighting her programming by Doppelg?nger.

  “Very good. Again.”

  “M… Mana. Mana!” Marisa grinned as she managed to say the name without a stutter this time.

  “And again. Show me that you are in control, not that book.”

  “Mana!”

  Mana leaned in and gave Marisa another kiss.

  “Very good. Now I know that when you call me by that name it’s you who is speaking to me – not Doppelg?nger.”

  Mana could see the joy in Marisa’s eyes – the desire to be accepted, to be loved. All of this outweighed Doppelg?nger’s drive to merge with Mana and take over her body.

  “What do you say we go on a beach date, Marisa?”

  Mana surprised herself with her own question – she wanted to reward Marisa for being good, true, but she herself desired to spend some quality time with her – and not in a stuffy backroom of a hovel. She wanted something special.

  ***

  Period of Warm Winds, 1477 in the Era of Plunder

  ***

  Mana and Marisa stepped out of the portal – two days after their little talk. Mana used her allowance to buy a second swimsuit and gifted it to Marisa for this little outing. After a short, awkward period of the two of them getting changed, surrounded by nothing but books, they were ready and stood on the soft sands of the desert island they visited before. The awkwardness didn’t quite stop there, as this was the exact island on which Doppelg?nger tried to drown Mana before – and she retaliated by impaling the girl with an arrow spell.

  “Want to hop an island over, maybe?” Mana asked bashfully as she dragged her foot over the sand to bury the clumps which had been soaked in Marisa’s blood and dried together.

  Marisa looked at her quizzically before the same realization dawned on her.

  “Ah… yes, let’s do that.”

  Mana nodded, opening a portal to one island over. This one featured more greenery, with a smaller beach, but the sand was just as soft.

  Gentle breezes caressed their skin as Mana set up a beach parasol and towels – thanks to her portal she didn’t have to lug them around and just pulled them from her room directly.

  After applying some sunscreen they went into the water, tossing the beach ball around between each other. Mana felt a strange sense of peace – from spending time with Marisa, and also as the part of Bonnie that still remained within her appeared to relax while she was ‘home’. This was her world, where she lived and died, and the sight of the blue ocean was soothing to her. Mana made a mental note to visit more often.

  ***

  Their beach date continued like many such outings of teenagers go. They went swimming, Mana opened a portal to a vending machine in her world and bought some drinks – she even went to a beach in Japan somewhere to buy soft serve for them. As the sun started to go down, they watched the sunset while sitting on the towel. Mana turned her head towards Marisa to have a good long look at her. She was exactly the same as her, with changed colors. But she more and more developed into her own person, with hopes and dreams – most of them the romantic kind involving Mana. And Mana started to share them, too. As Marisa turned her head towards Mana and tilted it, the Witch Queen went for it. She approached her clone – no, the other, so much different girl who merely looked like her, and kissed her deeply. It didn’t take long for Marisa to be pushed on her back as she allowed Mana to do anything she desired.

  That night Mana gave up the last vestiges of her innocence to the girl she had such a complicated relationship with.