Mana Mirror: Chapter Twenty (Patreon)

“What do you know about Paperbeetles?” Alvaro asked as we arrived on the first gate floor of the library.

“They’re beetles that eat paper?” I guessed.

“Right,” he said. “Like a Choruk, it uses death mana to break things down in its stomach and convert the death energies in what they ate into more mana for itself. Unlike Choruk, they come in swarms of twenty-two, and also are able to turn invisible. Not so well a detection spell can’t find them, but…”

“Twenty-two?” I asked. “And should I use Analyze Life, or Analyze Death?”

“Twenty-two,” he confirmed. “That’s the size of a colony. They share a single Mana Garden, and any outside of the twenty-second dies. And they’re technically classified as a type of undead, so death for sure.”

“Wait, but how do they reproduce?” I asked.

“They don’t,” he said, “they spawn as a natural condition of mana flux.”

“Huh,” was all I had to say to that.

“They’re fairly weak, but since they eat books, they’re a pain. They’re also rather slippery, and when captured alive, they’re actually fairly useful.”

“Does the library not have anyone who can capture them?” I asked curiously. “Not that I’m not thankful for the opportunity, but…”

“We do, but most of our employees have knowledge, mental, or both. We of course have some with other mana types, but most of the people who have the power to easily capture them aren’t interested in spending hours hunting down bugs,” he said, looking almost ashamed.

“That’s fair,” I said.

Alvaro stopped in the middle of the room and gave me a nervous smile.

“So, um, for the next part, I need you to close your eyes. The area they got in is one of the secret areas, and you’re not friendly enough with the library to know how to get in yet.”

“Okay…” I said warily. I didn’t think the public library system was going to do anything too weird to me, but I couldn’t help the spark of nerves that ran through me.

I closed my eyes and felt Alvaro put a bag over my head, then gently take the sleeve of my suit and lead me… Wherever we were going. The walk was long – too long for the library, or at least for this floor of it.

Sure, the library was built in a castle, but we had to be way out of the section about death mana now.

Eventually, however, Alvaro let go of my sleeve and took the bag off.

“Ok, you can open your eyes,” he said.

I did, and found myself in a room about twice the size of the bakery, with rows of shelves. Several of the books on the shelves looked new, but plenty looked worn out as well. Near me was a large reading table with a glass bug cage in it. I glanced around. There were no windows at all, and…

There was no door.

An illusion maybe? I shook my head.

“Find the bugs?” I asked. “And I assume don’t read anything here?”

“Right,” Alvaro said, nodding. “Unfortunately, I’ve got to go, but once you’ve collected all of the bugs, uh…”

He paused, considering. He pushed his glasses up on his face and I felt a surge of mana, then he poked me on my wrist. A blue-green tattoo, shaped like a butterfly appeared on it.

“Press that!”

I smiled softly and nodded. Alvaro turned behind one of the shelves and vanished.

I was becoming increasingly convinced that there was some sort of extraplanar chicanery at work.

But contemplating about that wasn’t going to get me much of anything, so I sketched the Analyze Death spell and fed my mana into it.

I spotted the first concentrated source of death mana almost immediately, gorging itself on a scroll. I sketched the Fungal lock spell, freezing it in place, and tossed it into the cage.

From there on, things got a bit harder. The bugs left trails of death energy that I could follow, but they’d been all over the room, which made the entire place glow faintly. As if that wasn’t enough, almost every one of the books gave off varying levels of death energy as well. I wandered around the room, trying to find some sort of central nest, but I couldn’t find anything.

After a bit, my death mana began to run low, and I poured my life mana into it. It was inefficient, but I had a fair bit more life mana than death mana at this point. I began to drink a Mana Shock too, since it couldn’t hurt.

In the locked room, my mana seemed to refill faster than normal, which only served to further convince me it was an extraplanar pocket.

After an hour of searching, I had managed to collect three more of the bugs, but that still left eighteen of them

I sighed and sat down for a break, but I kept the spell running. There was a growing ball of death energy around the bugs I’d captured, just from them sitting there so long, the excess power of their mana building up.

I considered that.

“Oh,” I said, feeling dumb.

I’d been ignoring the death energy in the room to look for death mana, since death mana was going to indicate a bug.

But they were eating the books for their death energy, both what was naturally found in the paper, and anything else they had from spellcraft.

I focused and walked around, looking for the books with the strongest concentration of death energy.

Almost instantly, I found a bug feasting on a thick tome. I locked it with fungus, then added it to the cage.

With my new and improved searching method, it only took me thirty minutes to find sixteen of the remaining bugs, which left just one.

I spent another fifteen minutes checking the most saturated books again, but it was no luck.

I frowned, considering what to do. After a moment of thought, I gathered up a pile of books that had been mostly eaten, but still had some pages and uneaten bits left. I piled them all together, and then cast the ungated spell that I used to proof dough.

It was just a guess, but most bugs liked heat and humidity. Sure, these were undead mana construct bugs, but it may work.

I had to maintain the proofing spell for several minutes, but eventually a bug did wander over. I sketched my spell to catch it, and…

The bug exploded with death mana and my spell tore apart.

It wasn’t even a spell, just a raw explosion of mana, using death to counter the death mana of my spell.

The beetle turned and began to skitter away, but I leapt forwards. I almost crushed it under my heel, but I managed to stop myself just in time.

In stopping myself, the bug had the time to crawl onto the shelves and dart away. I let out a curse and sketched a spell, then thrust my hand out, along with a generous portion of my mana.

A wave of mushrooms erupted over the shelves, covering everything. The mycelium wove between the gaps, through the books, and entangled the bug. It let out an explosion of death mana, but it had only worked the first time since I’d been doing such a weak spell to catch the bug.

This time, I’d easily overloaded the spell.

I let out a groan as my mana started to dwindle to nothing, and rushed to where the explosion of death mana had come from.

I grabbed the bug and dropped both of my spells.

Without the mushrooms around the bug, I could feel it squirming in my hand.

I shuddered and almost dropped the little monster.

It wasn’t real, I reminded myself.

When it was squirming so grossly in my hand, however, that was hard to remember. I ran to the tank and shoved it in, then wiped my hands on my suit jacket, gagging.

“I don’t think I’m going to take any missions related to bugs again,” I said to nobody in particular. I wiped my hands off a second time, this time on my pants. “And I’m going to buy some sanitizer and start carrying it with me.”

I wasn’t going to be getting any cleaner here, so I took a seat in the chair and touched the mark that Alvaro had left. The butterfly tattoo peeled itself off of my skin and fluttered a few times, then soared away.

It took a few minutes, but Alvaro appeared. He glanced around the room, then blinked.

“Did you freeze an entire shelf in place?” he asked incredulously.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Why..?” he asked. He didn’t seem mad, just completely befuddled.

“Well, the bug had gotten away, and it was the last bug, and I didn’t want to have to track it all down – I wasn’t really thinking about it, it just sorta… happened. Is that a problem? The mycelium tendrils aren’t fully physical, it shouldn’t have caused the books any damage, only locked them in place and drained some of their energy.”

Alvaro let out a giggle, covering his mouth with his long sweater sleeve.

“It’s alright, it’s okay! I was just surprised.”

I smiled at his giggle and let out a small laugh of my own, running my hand through my hair.

“Can I see your library card? And your full name.”

“Oh, sure,” I said, digging out my wallet and removing the thin wooden card. “And it’s Malachi Roth Baker.”

Alvaro took it, removed another card from his pocket, and began sketching a spell in the air. As he concentrated, his tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth, and I found myself grinning.

After a few moments, the spell finished, the two cards melted together, fusing into one, and he handed me the new library card. I glanced at it.

The normal card was cheap balsa wood, with the symbol of the library printed onto it, and my library number on the back.

This had completely transformed. It was made of a glossy black substance that felt oddly like a mix of wood and metal. On the front was the symbol of the library, printed in a pearl-like off-white color. I flipped it over to the back. My name was printed in the same white, followed by my library number. In the center was a phrase in some old language used by a long dead empire I thought I’d learned about in history class.

I stared at it. I’d never seen a card like this before.

“What does this… Mean?” I asked, confused.

“It’s the first step to a true library card,” he said, beaming up at me. “And that’s the library’s motto. It means ‘Wisdom, Knowledge, Might’.”

“Does the card do anything? Like let me check out combat spells?”

“Not with just a pearl seal, no. Basically all that does is waive library late fees. But once you’re trusted enough to get a ruby seal, you can check out a lot of the restricted areas, including the combat stuff. And hey, I’m sure you’ll get there!”

Honestly, just waiving late fees was a boon to me. I liked to read, but I’d often lose track of time and not read the book until weeks after I’d already checked it out.

“And your other reward,” Alvaro said, reaching into his pocket. “I had a bit of discretion in what I rewarded you with, and I actually, uh… picked it out with you in mind.”

He blushed slightly as he handed me a bottle marked with a skull.

“What is it?” I asked, opening it and sniffing. It smelled like cherries.

“It’s a pretty weird elixir,” he said. “It’s basically a Mana Restoration Elixir for death mana, but it isn’t an instant refill. It instead slowly trickles energy into you over the course of about ten hours. The trickle is too slow to be used in combat, or even actual spellcraft. Buttttt…”

“I’m trying to master spells, and just sketching them without fueling them doesn’t take much mana, so it’ll keep me topped off!” I said excitedly.

“Exactly!” he said happily. “I hope it helps for you.”

“It does,” I said. I stepped forwards and gave him a quick hug. He let out a small sound that reminded me of a mouse.

“I should lead you back now,” he said once I let go. I held out my hand for the bag and put it over my own head this time, and he lead me back.

By the time I’d arrived back at home, I realized that I was facing another choice.

The elixir that he’d given me wouldn’t expand my death mana at all, but it would let me make great progress on mastering my spell. But if I did that, then I wouldn’t have the time for a longer mission – and that two thousand silver mission did call to me, I couldn’t deny it.

It wasn’t like taking that mission now would prevent me from using the elixir in the future. But at the same time, if I always put missions first, I’d definitely fall behind. Not on this mission, but eventually.

Two thousand silver was more than I’d ever had in my bank account at once. I could do a lot with that money, but it may be better to focus on mastering my spell first. Then again, I wasn't sure I'd see such a lucrative job posted anytime soon, so this may be my only chance.

My indecision tumbled back and forth in my mind as I ran my fingers over the vial. What to do,, what to do...