???

  ***

  Another morning. Mana woke up with a yawn as she heard the bell ring at the end of the student dormitory’s corridor. She stretched, hopped off her bed, which consisted of a mattress, blanket and pillow laid out in a niche hewn into the room's wall. On the opposite wall of her accommodation, in a niche like her own, she saw a small bundle groaning and walked over to it to shake it violently.

  “Get up, you lazy bum, it's time for the morning assembly!”

  The bundle grumbled and swiped at her with an arm, letting out undignified, sleepy noises as Mana kept trying to get her roommate to move.

  “Come on, now! If you don't get moving, we're both getting into trouble! If that happens, I'm going to use you for potion experiments!”

  That got the bundle to move. Her roommate stared at her with wide eyes, which were a deep shade of green. Chaotic brown hair fell over her shoulders as she shot upwards and gathered herself.

  “Not the potions! Anything but the potions, Mana! I still feel the tingles from the last one you made me drink!”

  Mana rolled her eyes and walked to the large closet covering the wall between the sleeping niches.

  “Good. Then get dressed, Celia.”

  Mana grabbed a uniform from several out of the closet. A white shirt which was quickly hidden under a black blazer with red trims, together with a red plaid skirt. She pulled black thigh-high socks up her legs before she bound her hair in a short ponytail and attached the golden hairclip marking her as an honor student, then she turned around to face Celia, who was still crawling out of her bed.

  “I still don't get why they put the top and bottom students in the same room together…”

  “It's to help the bottom rung to become better, Mana… they think that we can learn from watching you.”

  Celia looked at the ground, nervously scratching the back of her neck.

  “It's not like I'd even make it to graduation. Your time is utterly wasted on me.”

  Mana let out a long sigh and stepped next to Celia, patting her head.

  “Only if you keep thinking of yourself that way, Celia. Just put in some effort and you, too, have the potential to be a top student of the magic academy.”

  Her roommate didn't appear all that convinced, but she got up to get herself dressed.

  ***

  The two walked down the dormitory hallway, joining the other students who merged into a single stream of people. Every one of them was a girl, as this was a female-only academy. Mana never really got to know why the academy was girls only, but it wasn't like she ever tried to find out. Whenever she tried to remember her own history or that of this place, her head started to hurt.

  She could hear some fighting in front of her and behind her – with the system of putting the best students together with the worst, there was a middle rung of students who were very close in skill, yet one was deemed better – it didn't exactly create the healthiest atmosphere of cooperation.

  The small procession of girls in short skirts now entered the main hallway and Mana could admire the rising sun outside, though it came with a chill running down her spine through her entire body as the chilly air hit the exposed part of her thighs – luckily her legs weren't exposed entirely or she would have started shaking already.

  The sight was breathtaking, even after three years of being here – a horseshoe-shaped mountain range dominated the entire view from the open hallway. The sun rose from the single gap in the mountains like an object of worship. The mountains have long been transformed, with temples, houses and palaces carved straight into their sides – just like the academy Mana attended right now. The valley nestled between these mountains couldn't be seen, as a thick layer of clouds obstructed the view, leaving only the white mountaintops. She looked out at the majestic view from an open corridor with a simple stone wall at chest height (for the small girl at the very least), with columns connecting it to the ceiling in regular intervals. There was no masonry involved anywhere, everything was cut from the very stone of the mountain and formed a single, massive structure with no gaps or mortar.

  Mana's attention was brought back to her roommate as she tugged on the girl's sleeve.

  “What do you think today’s assembly is about, Mana?”

  “Beats me. Could be a change in curriculum, could just be a recital from the holy texts of the goddess of magic, or maybe people are going to be picked for graduation trials.”

  “Uuu… I hope it's not the graduation trials.” Celia complained.

  ***

  It was the graduation trials. It took the head wizards barely a minute after all the girls were assembled in the courtyard to announce that fact. The courtyard was an impressive artificial crater chiseled into the very top of the mountain, surrounded on all four sides by more hallways with pillars and massive gateways. Statues of mighty witches were evenly spaced out at its northernmost side, with plenty of room for more. They honored esteemed graduates who became famous, or so she was told when she enrolled.

  “We will now announce the pair of top and bottom students to be brought to their respective trials.”

  An uneasy murmur went through the gathered crowd of girls. Graduation meant becoming a fully recognized mage in society – or so everyone believed.

  It used to be. Not anymore.

  Mana blinked. Where did that thought come from? She held her head and grimaced. She tried to remember if she knew anything specific about those graduations, but every time she tried to remember anything her head inexplicably hurt. She finally simply gave up.

  “The students are as follows: honor student Kanno and her… less esteemed roommate. That's it! Everyone else: Go to the mess, get breakfast and then attend your classes!”

  “Uuu… I don't want to do the trials, Mana… they're going to kill me.”

  Mana put her hand on Celia's shoulder and gently patted it. “Just do your best, Celia. I believe in you.”

  “You don’t even believe that, Mana.”

  Yeah. True.

  ***

  Celia and Mana were led down a hallway deeper into the mountain, and soon the only light came from torches on the walls. The pathway forked and the group came to a stop.

  “Ascendant student to the left – the other one to the right,” one of the wizards guiding the two announced. Celia hung her head and looked like she was about to cry – Mana felt sorry for her, being singled out like this as an underperformer, but before she could even say anything, the two were roughly grabbed by the shoulders and guided down their respective paths.

  “If we don't see each other again… it was nice being your roommate, Mana!” Celia shouted before she vanished around a corner.

  Mana was led to a heavy steel door, which was slowly pushed open by two low-ranked wizards in a ceremonial-looking manner.

  The room on the other side looked ceremonial. There was a galleria in which a few wizards sat in ceremonial blue robes, and the walls were lined with more copies of the commemorative statues of famous graduates.

  The other side of the room featured an identical steel door, closed for now.

  “The ascendant, Mana Kanno!” the wizard walking behind her announced to the room.

  “Hail, ascendant! Your journey to become a spellcaster of the realm is almost over, for you have shown aptitude for magic rarely seen in our academy. Your tenure was short but may your life of service to our nation be much longer in turn!”

  Mana looked at the faces of all the wizards inspecting her. All of them regarded her with strange expressions. Disgust? Adoration? Mana couldn't really tell, but she felt a strange sense of separation from everyone else.

  “All that stands in your way now is a final trial, one that tests your willpower to do as you are required to do for the good of the realm. Bring in the intruder!”

  Mana looked ahead as the door swung open and the heavy sound of rattling chains rung through the corridor behind it.

  Two wizards entered, flanking a short girl in a white witch robe. Her ankles and wrists were chained together, and she looked more annoyed by the situation than afraid. Her skin was sun kissed, and her hair was fiery red. And most importantly…

  Why does she look like me?

  “Your graduation challenge is the following: kill the intruder in a magic duel, and you're a full-fledged witch! If she wins… well, she gets to live another day in captivity.”

  “Generous,” the other girl commented sarcastically as the two wizards flanking her took off her magic-suppressing shackles.

  Mana readied herself and looked to the other wizards to await a command to begin – then the strange girl lifted a hand and immediately fired a spell in her direction without such adherence to protocol.

  August 2024

  A week earlier…

  ***

  Mana finished packing her things into a suitcase, which now contained enough clothes for a week. This next assignment by the Broker involved infiltration and staying undercover for an extended amount of time, so she was coming prepared. She told her parents that she was going on a beach trip with one of her more affluent classmates, to her family's vacation home in Shimoda. As far as she was concerned, that was a convincing enough story to keep her parents off her back for the duration of her planned trip.

  She carried her suitcase down the stairs as she locked eyes with her father, who sat on the living room couch. – she didn't like his posture at all, and the look he gave her. His following words completed Mana's ‘I don't like this' trifecta.

  “Mana, we need to talk,” he opened, then after she looked at him with a confused look, he added “I know that there's no vacation home in Shimoda.”

  ***

  Mana sat next to her father and stared at the ground as an uncomfortable silence hung between the two.

  Her father let out a long sigh, running a hand through his hair before he ruffled Mana’s.

  “For the record, I am not angry. In fact, I’m aware that you are up to some… unusual things in your time off.”

  Mana's jaw dropped, and she looked at him like a deer in the headlights.

  “You thought you were clever, hm? That we wouldn't notice anything off? Well, first things first: there’s your mother's witch costume that you wanted to use for ‘theater' but that you are in fact wearing so often that it's included in every wash. Then there's the fact that you constantly talk to other people in your room, but when we look, no one's in there with you. Also, sometimes you're simply not in your room, and then five minutes later we hear your voice from inside like you never left.”

  Mana bit her lower lip and kept looking at the ground.

  “All the strange stuff is kind of… half expected in this world, especially since your hair color changed. And your eyes, for that matter. But what surprised me the most is… how do I put it? I went to the bathroom the other night and…” He closed his eyes and cleared his throat before he turned her way again.

  “…Mana, did you secretly bring a boyfriend home?”

  Her eyes went wide and she started stammering.

  “A… a… uhm… a b-b-….”

  “Don't worry, Mana, I know you're that age now when you start looking at other people like that, I met your mother at that age, too, it's just…”

  “It's a girlfriend!” she finally blurted out.

  Her father seemed stumped for a moment, cocking his head.

  “Oh, so you're…”

  “Bisexual!” Mana added for him, and he nodded.

  “Oh! Oh, good. Well, for as long as it's a girlfriend I won't have to give you the talk about how to avoid getting pregnant at your young age. That's a relief!”

  The tension between them deflated for a moment and they let out an awkward chuckle, sinking into the couch as they both stared ahead.

  “So, will we get to meet her?”

  “Absolutely not!” Mana replied immediately.

  “Oh come on! We'd both love to meet whoever managed to steal our daughter's heart!”

  “Trust me, papa, it's complicated. Maybe once I've figured out a few things.”

  “Hm, whatever you say… and speaking of complicated…” his head turned Mana's way again.

  “…are you a Magical Girl, Mana?” her father looked straight at her and she met his gaze, swallowing heavily. She decided to go with it.

  “Something like that,” Mana replied after a little while, looking away again.

  “I am wielding magic, at least. Some of it comes from magic books, some of it I channel myself.”

  Another long pause and her father let out a long sigh, rubbing his chin.

  “I don't even need to ask if it's dangerous, you just have to look outside or watch the news every other day to confirm that. All I want to know is this, Mana: Are you doing good? Are you helping people?”

  Mana bit her lower lip as she remembered her various trips. She wasn't exactly a hero. She cleaned up her own messes. She was working towards some kind of greater good with the Broker, but that was transactional. The only selfless thing she was doing was trying to preserve the legacy of the dead people called Aranon – and her attempts to save Arisu from whatever Doppelg?nger had planned for her.

  “I'd like to help many more people than I already do, papa… but right now I'm stuck figuring something out. I…”

  She hesitated before she continued.

  “I'm selfish. I'm overconfident. I get myself into situations that have changed me forever. But one day I want all of that to have been worth it. I want to help people.”

  She closed her eyes and waited for whatever her father had to say about her words.

  “Good! You're recognizing your shortcomings. That means you won't be blinded by them!” Her hair got ruffled again and Mana let out a long, annoyed sound like a cat, pouting as she looked up at her father after the deed.

  “I thought you'd be angry, or forbid me from going…”

  "I don't think the parents of any Magical Girls could stop them even if they wanted to. All that matters to me, Mana, is that you're not using your powers for evil, and that you come home safe. Promise me those two things, alright?”

  Mana nodded before giving her father a tight hug.

  Moon of the Forgotten King, 1067 AR

  ***

  “Sorry I'm late!” Mana announced as she stepped through her portal - straight from her living room this time, with her father seeing her off with a little wave. He and Portal had a rather interesting conversation before Mana left, though it mostly consisted of her father giving the book instructions on what to do if she was ever in grave danger.

  “Someone's coming at her with a weapon or magic? Teleport her home! She offends a high-ranking person? Teleport her home! She starts getting overconfident and tries to do something stupid? Teleport her home!”

  Mana waited until the portal closed and her father was out of earshot.

  “Portal, ignore everything he said,” she finally said.

  “I don't even remember what he said.” Portal replied and the two shared a loud, dirty laugh.

  “What are you two laughing about?” Marisa asked as she walked up to Mana's side with her head tilted, but she was only met with a grin from her original.

  “Being rebellious in the face of parental authority!” Mana declared and was only met with an eye roll from her clone.

  “Good. You're both here.” Nicola spoke as she approached them from behind.

  “The place you both will be visiting is one of my favorite worlds. However, I haven't been there in a while and I hear that something strange is happening recently from other world travelers who deal with me.”

  Mana cocked her head as she listened to Nicola.

  “So it's not truly unsafe, but uncertain.”

  “That's right. And given that you are looking for the spell ‘alter memory’, I want to be as careful as I reasonably can be.”

  “Where would we even look for that?” Marisa asked.

  “In the library. Its use is highly regulated, but you should be able to commit the instructions to memory and cast it on one another for the purpose of capturing it. I will teach you ‘break spell’ to undo any memory alteration as well.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  The two witches nodded and followed Nicola into the hovel where she handed them the book to teach them the required spell.

  “One more thing: You shouldn’t go together. It's more prudent to keep one of you in reserve to be able to save the other should things go awry.”

  She pondered a moment, then she pulled a few rings out of a drawer. At least twenty of them.

  “These last eight hours each. It's a disguise spell. Just imagine an outfit you need, and it will provide it, in this case the academy uniform. I don't know what it looks like these days, so you will have to find a student and copy her.”

  “And if it's a boy?” Mana asked immediately.

  “That will be of no concern, it's a girl's academy.”

  Mana and Marisa exchanged a concerned look.

  “Only girls isolated in an academy… memory altering spells… that sounds kind of…” Mana didn't get to finish.

  “That sounds like a scenario from one of your dirty manga!” Marisa exclaimed and Mana slapped a hand on her mouth to silence her, much to Nicola's obvious amusement.

  “It's good to see you both get along so well!” the Broker said and gave Mana a wide grin as the latter rolled her eyes.

  Period of Searing Heat, 1477 in the Era of Plunder

  ***

  The two turned Marisa's hideout into their base of operations for their trip.

  Mana put down her suitcase and blinked as Marisa eagerly hurried to her side to give her a kiss.

  “It's like a vacation! Will you be home tonight?” Marisa eagerly inquired as she grabbed Mana's hands.

  “Well, I hope so. It might be that to pretend to be a student I need to spend the night, but I generally plan to spend the nights with you, Marisa.”

  Marisa's eyes sparkled with happiness in response to Mana's words and the latter smiled at her.

  Hard to believe we tried to kill each other not that long ago.

  ???

  ***

  Mana stepped out of her portal into a hallway carved from stone, taking in the sights. Right in front of her the hallway opened up and she could see the outside world through a row of columns, with the sun hanging high over a mountain range forming a horseshoe shape. Structures were carved into each and every mountain, with faint lights coming from columned openings like the one she was looking out of.

  Her surroundings were quiet, so she decided to sneak along the hallway. She hoped she would spot a pair of students somewhere, to use her disguise rings on them and blend into the crowd. It was eerily quiet, save for the wind outside – she saw some snow being blown off the mountaintops in a beautiful display as she let herself be distracted for a small moment.

  “You're not from around here.”

  Mana immediately wheeled around and blasted whoever was talking to her. The figure behind her was flung away from her, sailing through the air until she hit the wall behind her with a loud “Hurk!” Her head slumped forwards, making her chaotic brown hair fall over her face as she slid down from a standing into a sitting position.

  She wore a shirt with a black blazer, with a red plaid skirt which looked a little too short for the snowy mountain region, but at least she wore black thigh-high stockings to keep her legs warm.

  The academy outfit! I guess she won't mind if I copy it while she's unconscious…

  Mana pointed one of the magic rings she was given at the hapless girl and worked her spell. Her witch robes changed their shape and assumed the form of the academy uniform instead. Mana immediately shuddered as a cold wind hit her exposed thighs and she hurried down the hallway, leaving the unconscious girl behind.

  ***

  Mana peeked around a corner, through an open doorway carved into the mountain granite and finally saw the first signs of human life since the girl who almost caught her.

  A classroom, as far as she could tell. Not one with desks and chairs, but one with a large blackboard on which magic incantations were written down, while the class stood spread around the room and attempted to channel the very same spells to varying degrees of success.

  ‘Fire Arrow’, the blackboard read, and even though Mana was supposed to be busy with something else, her eyes darted over the instructions. After memorizing them she went back into cover behind the wall and gave it a try.

  “Fire arrow!” she said to herself, pointing a finger towards the mountainous view outside. No reaction.

  She peeked around the corner again, furrowing her brow as she re-read some of the instructions , then she tried again.

  “Fire arrow!” some fire fizzled around her finger, but died out a mere moment later, so Mana adjusted some of the mental work she did to materialize the spell.

  “Fire arrow!” she spoke again and this time a flaming arrow flew from her finger – though one would be hard pressed to call it an arrow, as it more resembled a ballista bolt. It soared into the mountain range and exploded somewhere out of view.

  “Woops.”

  “Oho! A prodigy! But unable to hold back when it counts, huh?!” Mana whirled around and was face to face with the brown-haired girl again. She was so close that Mana could directly look into her dark green eyes and see every one of the blood vessels in them – which seemed to pop out a little in anger. A small trickle of blood ran down her face from her scalp, split by her nose

  “I don't know what kind of magic you used, but you used your hands, so!”

  Mana felt her wrists suddenly bound by strange, magical chains and pulled to the sides – she uselessly struggled against them for a moment as the stranger came closer.

  “What is that commotion out there?” she heard the voice of the old teacher shout, and the girl suddenly ran away, gesturing for the shackles to pull Mana along, who uselessly struggled against the chains again, and decided to prove the strange girl's assumption about her magic wrong. With a thought the Blast spell erupted from her chest and hit the running girl in the back, sending her rolling along the floor as Mana looked at the magic chains holding her.

  “Break spell!” she commanded her newly learned magic and the shackles on her left wrist disappeared, but as she turned around to get rid of the chains on her right she was tackled to the ground by the brown-haired girl.

  “Stop it! You're going to ruin everything!” she hissed her way – then she went flying again with a scream of frustration.

  Mana broke the other chains and stood up as the other girl pointed a finger at her, a flaming arrow on its tip.

  “Stop what you're doing right now! You're going to -”

  “Blow your cover, Celia Annetti?”

  The girl turned pale and looked past Mana – she wanted to follow her look, but she was immediately tackled to the ground from behind and felt her hands being forced behind her back – then shackles were put on her wrists. She wanted to use magic to free herself, but suddenly felt herself unable to use it.

  She was pulled on her feet and face to face with the brown-haired girl who was placed in a similar predicament to her own.

  “See what you've done!” she spat Mana's way.

  “It was only a matter of time until the royal authority would investigate, I suppose,” a grey-bearded man spoke as he approached the two captured witches.

  “Always so nosy. So concerned! I didn't expect them to use age regression magic to pass off one of their most skilled agents as one of our students, though.”

  The woman called Celia turned her head to the side in annoyance before she responded.

  “If I don't report in at a certain time, they'll come and tear this place down, collateral damage be damned.”

  “Is that so? Well, I am glad that my preparations are almost complete, then. The goddess will be reborn through the flesh of our most skilled student by next week!”

  Now he looked at Mana, grabbing her chin and turning her head to look her in the eyes. “And as you correctly identified, this one right here is a prodigy. She might serve nicely with the right number of alterations.”

  “Leave her out of this! She's a complete outsider! And a child!” Celia shouted now, but her only response was a dry laugh from the grey-bearded man.

  “Lead them away. Alter their memories to turn them into proper students. And make sure that Celia's knowledge of magic is so severely lacking that she is guaranteed to become the blood sacrifice for the summoning ritual.”

  Mana wanted to struggle against her chains, to do anything, but she was simply helpless.

  Period of Searing Heat, 1477 in the Era of Plunder

  ***

  Marisa paced up and down her little hideout, looking at the suitcase Mana brought with her. She hadn’t come back in three days now, which worried Marisa to no end. She wanted to be good and stay here until Mana came back, but something was gnawing at the back of her mind, and she couldn’t sit still.

  “Ah, to hell with it!” she shouted and grabbed a handful of the disguise rings off the table as she walked outside her little hut.

  “I’m coming, Mana!”

  ???

  ***

  She found herself in a large hallway, quiet and with an open view of a mountain range, but she wasn’t interested in that right now.

  Marisa hurried down the corridor, trying to find any clue as to what happened to Mana. She walked by what looked like a classroom in which a bunch of students were being instructed by an old man with a long beard but didn’t pay it any mind – until she noticed that one of the students had strikingly blue hair.

  She peeked around the corner to watch.

  “Come on, Celia. Give me the bottle. Here’s how you do it.”

  The students were all gathered around cauldrons in pairs of two, but in most cases, it looked like only one of them was doing work, while the other had to watch and was being chastised for their uselessness.

  “Uuu… I’m sorry Mana, I’m trying, but I somehow can’t grasp it…”

  “It’s fine, Celia. Here’s how you do it.”

  Marisa furrowed her brow and kept watching as Mana showed the girl how to properly mix the potion required for the classes.

  “Here. That’s how you do it.”

  “Oh! I… don’t think I remember all the steps.”

  Mana let out a loud sigh in response and put her ladle into the mixture. She had a massively mischievous grin on her face as she brought it up to Celia’s face.

  “Want to have a taste?”

  “Eh? Mh… sure.”

  Some other students turned their heads as the brown-haired girl had a sip before she recoiled from it and put the back of her hand to her mouth.

  “What… what is that?!”

  “You didn’t pay attention again. It’s an aphrodisiac. For the Pegasi in the stables, because they’ve been very lazy during breeding season. It shouldn’t get you ‘in the mood’ as a human, but…”

  “Ugh… Mana, you dummy!” the other girl exclaimed and stormed out of the room, passing by Marisa as she rubbed her arms.

  “Everything tingles! Stupid Mana!” she shouted, not noticing the girl looking exactly like Mana at all.

  “Miss Kanno, you should refrain from teasing your academic partner so. She already suffers enough from being paired with the highest-ranking student while being the lowest ranking herself.” The grey-bearded teacher chastised Mana, and she rubbed the back of her head, poking out her tongue.

  As far as I can tell that is just Mana, the same as always… but something is strange about her...

  ***

  Marisa spent the next two days in and out of the academy. She now had the uniform memorized, so she could disguise herself to slip in and out unnoticed, but didn’t dare to approach Mana just yet, not knowing whether she was simply deep undercover. She watched her learn a few new spells – among them classics such as icicles and magic missiles – and while she secretly watched the lessons, she taught herself as well. What worried Marisa was that she couldn’t see Portal or any of the other books nearby. She even once lurked in the dormitories and searched Mana’s room during classes but couldn’t find the talking spell books at all.

  Her answers came on the sixth day as she wandered past the courtyard. The academy was silent again, with all the girls being taught in classrooms far away, but something called Marisa to the large courtyard in the artificial crater.

  She saw dozens of girls being dragged along by chains and made to stand in a row before one of the grey-bearded masters of the academy.

  The grey wizards all kind of looked the same to Marisa, but she assumed this person was something like the headmaster of the academy.

  “Welcome, new students! You may complain and object, but from this day forth you are members of the royal academy!” he simply declared.

  The girls were crying or simply looking on in fear, some of them begging that they want to go home.

  “Nonsense, all of this! You will learn magic and be happy. You will soon be part of an army under command of the goddess of magic herself. Tomorrow the grand ceremony will begin, and you all shall bear witness to a new age! But for that purpose, I will need to alter your memories to put an end to all of this ‘I want to go home’ nonsense going on in your pretty little heads!”

  He raised a hand towards them and cast a spell, which turned their eyes vacant. He gestured, with his eyes closed in concentration as he shaped memories to his desires, but he was rudely interrupted by a blue glow surrounding him.

  Marisa cursed quietly – she was poking out from behind a statue, three newly enchanted rings in her hand. She cast Trace on the memory altering spell without thinking, like capturing spells had become second nature to her. And now she tossed the rings quickly through a small portal as all heads turned her way.

  I have to get Mana out of here!

  “Intruder! Get her!”

  ***

  Marisa ran through the corridors, utilizing her barriers against the onslaught of icicles and magic missiles. Brainwashed students swarmed out of the classrooms she ran past and joined the barrage raining down on her.

  If her memory served correctly, Mana’s classroom was all the way down the corridor – she would simply grab her and jump through a portal with her to get her back to their hideout where she could undo the memory magic.

  At least that’s what she thought. She was attacked from her blind spot, caught by a wind blast and thrown against the wall. She groaned, disoriented and hurting all over, then someone slapped strange chains on her wrists – and sapped her ability to use magic.

  “Alone against a whole academy, is that what you thought?”

  The grey-bearded man approached her and ran a hand through his beard. He eyed her spell books with some interest.

  “The same as that other girl had – who looked just like you.”

  Marisa gave him a defiant look as two other wizards grabbed her arms and propped her up.

  “What are we to do with her, headmaster?”

  He only considered his options for a short time before he replied.

  “The rebirth requires two things: a blood sacrifice of a witch and a murder committed by the avatar. We already dedicated Annetti to the first duty. I think we just found our murder victim.”

  ***

  And so, she was brought to the strange ritual room in which she was to ‘duel’ Mana. They took away her spellbooks, thinking that she would be helpless without them. And for the most part they were right, she only learned the few offensive spells she knew in the past few days after all – and they made sure to erase any memory she had of them.

  However, they were not thorough enough.

  She saw Mana’s confusion as she recognized that Marisa looked just like her – and after the shackles were removed from her wrists she used her girlfriend’s obvious confusion to get a first strike in on her.

  “Break spell!”

  Mana blinked in confusion – her mind cleared up. She remembered now. She wasn’t here for three years, but for merely a week. Her roommate wasn’t a bumbling low-performer, she was a skilled mage who was intentionally turned inept to humiliate her before her later blood sacrifice. The girl in front of her wasn’t her enemy, she was her girlfriend. Her clone, the soul of her twin sister who never was. So many things came back to her.

  “Are you well, Miss Kanno?” one of the mages on the galleria inquired. “She got you good with that one, it seems. Can you go on?”

  Mana made eye contact with Marisa – and they both nodded, turning towards any present wizards.

  ““Break Spell!””

  ***

  All but the headmaster looked incredibly confused after they were hit by the magic. The old man grimaced and ran out of the door immediately.

  “Help! An intruder is loose and is trying to kill me!”

  Mana exchanged a look with Marisa before they ran out of the room, after the headmaster.

  The old man sprinted, almost tripping over his beard as he infrequently looked over his shoulder, at the two girls who came after him.

  Students left the classrooms with some confusion written on their faces, but one after the other they were hit by the duo’s spell-breaking magic.

  “It’s no use, old man!” Marisa shouted as she pointed a finger at her own head to cast ‘Break Spell’. Her head shot to the side for an instance, then she had a mad grin on her face as she pointed her finger at the running man and pierced his leg mercilessly with a magic missile. He screamed and fell to the ground, holding his leg, staring at the two witches with wide eyes.

  “Where’s our books?!” Mana shouted, grabbing him by the collar and shaking him.

  ***

  With a little bit of convincing, they got the information out of the old man – by now a sizeable crowd of freed students had gathered and gave him a strange look as he was lying on the ground. Mana and Marisa decided to leave him behind, and not to look back as they left the pleading man in the middle of the gathered crowd of girls who were this man’s slave soldiers for who knows how long.

  “We should get our books from the library section he mentioned and get out of here, Mana!” Marisa insisted and dragged her along. Mana nodded, but then she suddenly stopped. There was something gnawing at the back of her mind, and only now she could place her finger on it.

  “Celia!” she suddenly shouted, startling Marisa.

  “What about her?” Marisa asked impatiently, but Mana was already running back to the trial chambers.

  “Are you doing good, Mana? Are you helping people?”

  Her father’s words echoed in her mind as she ran as fast as her short legs could carry her.

  Please let her be alright!

  Mana ran and reached the split path to the graduation rooms – and picked the path Celia was taken down. She turned the corner and was faced with another heavy door which she threw her whole weight against to push it open. She fell into a dark room, only lit by a few torches – strange symbols were carved into the floor which looked like gutters.

  “Oh goddess! We offer you both the flesh of an avatar as the blood of a witch! Descend to our world and sweep away those unworthy of your gifts!”

  Half a dozen hooded people stood around an altar, to which Celia was strapped. She looked up in horror, with her face marred by tears as another hooded kneeled on top of her, a wavy ritual knife raised – which rapidly came down – and up, and down again.

  Mana came just in time to see the start of the ‘blood sacrifice’.

  ***

  “No!” Mana screamed and gestured to blast the person off Celia – until she remembered that she didn’t have the book on her. She cursed and tears flowed down her face as she ran towards the altar and threw herself against the cultist with the knife – it was one of the students, brainwashed like the rest.

  “Blasphemer!” the girl shrieked and stabbed at Mana – she hit her in the side and a deep crimson stain spread on Mana’s hip – she screamed and headbutted the girl before she cast ‘Break Spell’ on her, then weakly did the same to the others.

  “Mana!” she heard Marisa’s voice behind her and heard her running closer.

  “Don’t!” she shouted at her and pointed at the altar.

  “Save her! Please!”

  ***

  Marisa froze in place – she looked around between the injured love of her life and the girl she pointed at.

  For whatever reason, Mana wanted to save the life of the girl she bullied just days ago. The brown-haired girl turned pale awfully fast and sputtered as her own blood filled her lungs while Mana collapsed on the ground, whimpering.

  Marisa didn’t know what to do – she wanted to ease Mana’s pain, but would she hurt her more if she let this strange girl die? Why did she mean so much to Mana?

  She finally let out a scream of frustration and ran over to the stranger, extending her hand to cast her healing spell on her.

  “But you’re right after, no matter what!”

  She saw color returning to the girl’s face, who looked up at her with a little smile. She coughed up some more blood which was still in her lungs and spat it out to the side.

  “You look different! Different but good, Mana…”

  “I’m Marisa.”

  “Are you two twins?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Weird! But sounds lovely…”

  The girl looked fine enough, so Marisa hurried to Mana’s side. She pulled the dagger out of her side, resulting in Mana letting out a loud scream, before she applied the healing magic to her.

  “Why did you take such a risk, Mana?!” she shouted at her.

  “I don’t want to be selfish anymore…” Mana responded with red cheeks and looked to the side, away from Marisa.

  After one more application of Break Spell, the two of them were in for a surprise. Celia grew a head taller (and got terribly embarrassed as her academy uniform ripped in the process), so Mana assumed that they broke not just the memory alteration, but also whatever spell she used to infiltrate the academy.

  She had three scars on her chest – lucky for her the brainwashed student missed her heart every time, or this healing procedure wouldn’t have been enough.

  “Phew… what a way to get caught and almost killed. I would thank you, but…”

  Mana blinked innocently at her, then she felt a hot pain radiate through her ear as Celia pulled on it.

  “Ow, ow, ow!”

  “It’s your fault that I got caught in the first place, isn’t it?” Celia looked at her with an annoyed expression.

  “And making me sip aphrodisiac meant to make the beasts of burden breed? You’re a cruel little devil, aren’t you?”

  Mana didn’t complain, pressing her lips together to endure the pain while she gestured for an agitated Marisa to let Celia do as she wanted.

  Finally, Celia let up and let out a long sigh.

  “…so, tell me what happened while I was getting strapped down and almost stabbed to death.”

  ***

  Mana and Marisa gave their report – the fact that everyone except the headmaster were manipulated by memory magic, that they caught him, and he was currently receiving justice from the students he abused – they told Celia everything but kept under wraps that they came here to copy that very spell.

  Celia accompanied them to the library and gave them access to the section with their spell books, then she bade them a short farewell and shackled a freshly bruised headmaster who lacked a severe number of teeth.

  From what she told them during their trip to the library, she was an agent sent by this nation’s ruler, to investigate why all correspondence from the magic academy stopped. Apparently, the headmaster was a cultist, worshipping an old incarnation of this world’s goddess of magic, a much crueler version than the one being revered by the official religion. In the past, the goddess atoned for her own cruelty by dying and being reborn from her own ashes as something much purer. Though some cultists believe they can bring her old incarnation back to slay the new one and bring back the age in which might and magic alone ruled far above ‘law’ dictated by magic-less peons.

  Maybe I’ll learn more about this world and their religion when I come back one day.

  With that thought, Mana and Marisa returned to their world.

  Period of Searing Heat, 1477 in the Era of Plunder

  ***

  Back in their little hideout, Mana examined the three rings with a little grin.

  “Good thinking to copy them… though you got caught because of them.”

  “It’s alright, Mana. I’m just glad everything worked out…”

  Marisa lifted Mana’s shirt and stared at the small scar on her side with a gloomy expression.

  “Are you still worked up over that? I’m alright now, Marisa. It’s just a scar.” Mana calmed her down, gently patting her head.

  “Weren’t you so into the idea of being a champion of justice? I want to be something like that, too, so I have to help people. Especially when it was me who got them in trouble, right?”

  “Just be more careful about it next time.” Marisa said with a pout, but smiled as Mana kissed her on the forehead.

  “I’m going to hand these over to the Broker. Will you get us dinner? I have to go back home tomorrow…”

  “Sure thing, Mana!”

  Moon of the Forgotten King, 1067 AR

  ***

  “Very good. I’ll keep two of these, and you can keep your extra, as promised,” the Broker spoke to Mana after inspecting her rings. She put them into a little magic chest – then she took a deep breath as she let the lock snap close.

  “A finished task is such a good feeling, even if it’s just a small piece of the greater picture, wouldn’t you agree, young Witch Queen?”

  The silver-haired woman gave Mana a gentle smile – but the latter could only look at the ring in her hand, hoping she would never need to use it.

  “Come, Mana. Cheer up. You get the whole wisdom of the Aranon – and anything you want to ask besides,” she encouraged the young girl, and Mana nodded, looking her in the eyes.

  “Right. Here.” She put the crystal tear on the desk and the Broker smiled, simply sliding a piece of parchment her way.

  “You don’t need those other baubles anymore. With this you can read everything. Not just the Aranon. Any trove of information in this vast multiverse is now at your disposal. You only have to find them.”

  Mana’s eyes widened, and she grabbed the spell, scanning it with her eyes.

  “…this…”

  “Is inspiration striking?” the Broker inquired with another smile, and Mana nodded enthusiastically.

  “I think I want to become a researcher… so that here on Earth we can benefit from any knowledge coming from other worlds…”

  “There you go, young Witch Queen. Dream big!”

  Mana stood up and pocketed the spell with a big grin on her face.

  “Thank you, Nicola! And… uh… can I…?”

  “Work for me again for spells? Of course, Mana. And this time I won’t send you in so much danger,” the Broker replied.

  “Good! Well, I’m off then…” Mana said with a grin, but at the door she remembered something.

  “…right.”

  The young witch turned around and looked at the Broker again.

  “What’s your name? Your full name.”

  “Oh dear, I hoped you forgot about that. But a deal is a deal.”

  The Broker sighed heavily, but she smiled nonetheless.

  “I am Nicola Bille.”

  Mana nodded – but something clicked in the back of her mind. This wasn’t good, she suddenly realized. The hooded woman lifted her right hand and purple strings dangled from her fingers. She tugged at them, and the bodyguards who still gave Mana dirty looks for the way she blasted them into the wall during their first meeting quite literally lost their skin. It flowed together with their clothes into a strange liquid, falling to the ground and disintegrating, leaving behind wooden marionettes, hanging by purple glowing strings like the ones dangling from the woman’s fingers.

  “You might know me as Madame Bille.”