Mana Mirror: Chapter Sixty (Patreon)

Good news, everyone! Three chapters this week!

-

I wasn’t the best at sitting still and doing nothing, but I did like books. Surely working on the book sorting couldn’t be too bad, right?

And besides, it paid really, really well.

I tapped the paper.

“This one, it’ll let me knock out most of the things I need for my staff all at once.”

Alvaro nodded and led me to the back rooms – not the astral plane, but the actual back rooms this time. He glanced at the clock and wrote down a note.

“Alright, so you can get a thirty-minute lunchbreak whenever, and three ten-minute breaks when you need them. First things first, let’s go through the system. We use a variant of the same system that your school library probably used. Ours is the standard in Elohi and Kijani, but some of Mossford’s older systems have created dissonance in the schools. Alright – each book is given nine numbers…”

He began talking about the numbering system, and I tried to listen.

I really did.

But this wasn’t magic, or anything cool, it was just… Numbers.

I sorted the books I owned by their vibes, which made sense to me. And though they did use some categorization by genre and subgenre, which was kind of close, they’d assigned numbers to each and every one of the genres and subgenres. There were genres on the reference list Alvaro gave me that I’d never even heard of.

If I'd just been able to use my own system, it would have been easy enough, but using their number based system made my head spin.

Once he finished explaining, he smiled and pushed up his glasses.

“Got that?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said as Dusk rustled her agreement. I’d probably be able to figure it out by doing it, right? It couldn’t be that hard…

I was led through stack upon stack of boxes to a specific area of boxes Alvaro pointed to.

“Alright, you’ll be working through this area. We need you to do three boxes per day at least, but the more you can do, the better.”

He handed me a clipboard and pen.

“If you have any questions, just give me a shout, the area I’m sorting isn’t too far away. I’m dealing with magical or possibly enchanted texts, but since you’re new, this is one of the safest boxes.”

Dealing with enchanted texts actually sounded more interesting, at least somewhat.

I thanked him and started by opening the first box, opening it, and beginning to skim through the book’s descriptions and contents. Then I wrote the name down and started to mark off the right numbers…

Dusk actually helped me there. I couldn’t remember what several of the numbers were supposed to indicate, but she did, and would whistle out the right answer to me.

At least, I hoped it was the right answer. It probably was.

A few hours into my work, I cast Internal Pocketwatch to check the time.

I froze. I’d been working at this for hours, hadn’t I?

But my spell said only fifteen minutes had passed.

I used it to check for any deviations from the normal flow of time, just in case they somehow slowed time in the area to help sorting take less time in the normal world, but there was nothing.

I sighed and ran a hand through my black hair. Should I add a red or blue streak to it? That would look pretty nice.

I turned back to the pile of books and worked at it again for what felt like another hour, though it was actually only another ten minutes, then I rose and found Alvaro.

“I’m gonna take one of my breaks,” I said. “Want to join me?”

He looked up, then nodded.

“Sure,” he said. “Do you want a cookie?”

“Sure!” I said.

He led us to a small librarian break room, with a coffee machine and tea pot, as well as some chairs and a tin of cookies. I had two and made myself some coffee. It would hopefully help me focus.

“Have you thought about ascending once you master your space and time spells?” Alvaro asked.

“I think I will,” I said between sips of the blindingly hot coffee.

“If you do, don’t use any elixirs to do so,” Alvaro said. “Ascension elixirs may work well, but they tend to take too much out of your future attempts to open higher gates. You’ve done a lot of really good spell work, it’d be a shame to ruin it.”

“Noted,” I said with a laugh.

Far too quickly for my tastes, the break was over and it was back to the grind of the books.

The coffee helped a little bit, so I went back several times to make some cups of coffee. Midway back from my… fifth? Sixth? Coffee run, I frowned, staring at my fingers.

My hands were trembling.

Hmm.

Maybe I’d had too much coffee.

I resolved to not have any more coffee for the rest of the day, but unfortunately, that meant that I was definitely going to be bored while I was working.

I tried to take my lunch break with Alvaro, but he just wanted to sit and talk while he was eating his sandwich. I needed to stretch my legs, so I left the library real quick to grab lunch at a nearby shop, then headed back into work.

To try and help my growing sense of extreme boredom, I began to perform the Depths of Starry Night mana exercise. I couldn’t do the physical portions of it, so it wasn’t as effective as it could be, but it helped a little bit, at least.

By the end of the day, I’d barely gotten through my three boxes that I needed to, and I said goodbye to Alvaro before rushing home and running up to Ed.

“Hey, let’s spar!”

He blinked at me, then squinted.

“Really?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been sitting all day, it was horrible. I need to move.”

He shrugged, let me change, and we headed out into the back yard, but Dusk peeped, and I glanced at her.

“Really?”

She peeped again, saying that the excess mana that we put off would be good for her, and so I looked at Ed.

“That ok with you?”

“Sure,” he said.

I waved my hand and opened up a portal to Dusk’s astral plane, and we headed inside.

The small folk’s village – hamlet? It was small – had expanded somewhat, with them having done a lot of work on it, and my peacepyre floated among them.

Huh, that was probably why I hadn’t seen it in a while.

We moved away from the village to a clear area, and I extended my mana senses while wrapping myself in the Harvest Distance and Internal Pocketwatch spells.

Then we began to spar.

Normally, it would have been… Not annoying, exactly, but not something I really enjoyed. But after the horrible day I’d just had, it was actually amazing to get the exercise in.

Ed shot his Stone Spear at me, and Dusk clapped, cheering him to do it again.

I released a bone shard and met the spear head on. It dealt some damage, but Ed’s spear, despite being a new and unpracticed spell for him, it was still backed hard by his legacy and stronger mana, so my shard cracked and tumbled aside.

I poured mana out of me, then concentrated it and pulled it back in, sending the new, denser power into the Briarthreads spell, and the threads aligned to block the spear.

I was pushed back by the force, but I just managed to block it, then I retaliated with multiple bone shards coming at him from multiple angles. He just cast his Skin of Stone spell and let them crack against his skin harmlessly before lunging at me.

I cast Briarthreads again, just regularly this time, and the sharp briars found no purchase on his skin. He ripped through them, then knocked me to the ground.

I let out a wumph as I fell, and took deep breaths as Ed helped me to my feet.

“Not bad,” he said. “I had to use second gate magic to counter you. You’re gonna be a terror when you’re as strong as me. Though of course, you’ll always be my baby brother, so you’ll still lose to me.”

“Sure, sure,” I said, rolling my eyes at him.

I made a quick fish curry that night with lots of mustard, haddock, onions, and cherry tomatoes, and packed some of the leftovers for my lunch the next day.

Unfortunately, the next day came far too quickly, and I had to go back to sorting the books again.

As I was sorting, I continued to practice my Depths of Starry Night technique. A little way into my sorting, something caught my eye.

There was movement from one of the boxes.

I walked over and poked around at the box to try and figure what it was, but everything seemed normal.

I frowned and swept my mana senses over the box. There was nothing.

Actually…

One of the books on the top was truly nothing. Not even the tiniest bits of death or knowledge I’d expect.

I reached down to pick up the book.

The book snapped open, then bit down on my hand. I let out a yelp and shook it off, throwing it into one of the nearby boxes.

It flew upwards, hovering in midair, then shot at me.

I wrapped it in a Fungal Lock spell, but to no avail. The book was able to keep moving, nothing to lock down, and it hit me in the chest, knocking me back.

I rubbed at my chest, annoyed. Why’d it have to hit me there?

It went in for another swing, and I released a Pinpoint Boneshard. It struck with a resonant thump, and the book shot backwards.

“Malachi!” I heard Alvaro shout.

“It’s fine,” I said, calling two more bone shards out of my mana garden.

“Wake up,” Alvaro said.

I blinked.

The world around me began to go fuzzy.

“Malachi!” Alvaro said again.

I blinked my eyes open, and saw Alvaro standing over me, gently shaking my shoulder.

“Wha?” I asked, my voice still sleepy.

“How long have you been asleep?” Alvaro asked, sounding… very neutral.

Too neutral. I knew that kind of neutral. Lots of teachers had used that tone with me, because they didn’t want to sound annoyed or angry, but they weren’t happy.

“I don’t know,” I said. “What time is it?”

“Lunch,” he said. “I figured you just hadn’t used your breaks yet.”

I glanced over at Dusk, who was sitting in front of one of the books.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” I asked her.

She babbled, and I frowned.

“What do you mean, you thought I needed to sleep? I was supposed to work.”

She rustled, and I felt around in my spirit. Sure enough, my Depths of Starry Night technique was still moving.

On its own.

It wasn’t increasing the recovery or potency of my mana, but it was definitely doing something.

“Focus!” Alvaro said, sounding actually a bit annoyed. “Listen, I get that this work isn’t the most interesting, but that is why I offered the Goetíea missions too. But if you’re gonna do it, you’ve got to actually work. Listen, I like you, but you can’t just sleep.”

“I know,” I said, my own frustration leaking through. “I don’t want to! That’s why I drank a bunch of coffee yesterday. I had the same trouble in school. When I was doing something interesting, like spells or mana exercises, I can focus for hours without thinking about anything else, but when I try to do something like this, I just… Can’t. I can’t control it! Trust me, I… wish I could.”

Alvaro closed his eyes, took off his glasses, and polished them with his sweater.

“I am sorry to hear about your problems, but… I can’t really help you. Have you seen a mentalist doctor?”

“Only the one in school,” I said. “They weren’t useful. Worse, actually. They just tried to make me do some things to be present in the moment, but that just made me focus on the wrong things.”

“Maybe you should look into seeing one,” Alvaro said. He didn’t sound annoyed this time, just… Sympathetic. Almost pity.

That made me almost angry. I wasn’t broken. I was able to work just fine, it was just boring things that got to me.

“Yeah, maybe,” was all I said instead.

“Listen, I am sorry to hear about it, but… here, just finish out today, I’ll get you the deathpapyrus, and you can end it, okay?”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll get some coffee.”

I did as I said, and through the use of multiple cups, I was able to finish out the day. Alvaro handed me a piece of deathpapyrus, and I left.

As I left, Dusk whistled to ask me why Alvaro had been annoyed, since I’d perfected my mana meditation technique. I tried my best to explain some of the concepts of work, and how that came before increasing your power as a mage, but she seemed more confused than anything.

-

In case anyone thinks that this was unfair, I will say two things:

One, it's mentioned several times how Malachi struggled in school, and even in the last chapter he laments that Dusk's better at sitting still and waiting than him.

Two, it's a good reminder that not every choice is a winning one. Oh sure, meta wise, you know I'm not about to kill him off. But as things get more dangerous, and stakes get higher, injuries can happen. I think this is actually good to have Malachi take a loss now, when it's relatively minor, rather than end up with him in the hospital for two weeks.