This Magical Girl is Mine-5.1 The Masks We Wear

This Magical Girl is Mine-5.1 The Masks We Wear

My oldest friend in the world—a woman I’ve known since high school—just told me that she’s a wizard. This is, to put it mildly, something of a shock. And, given my best friend’s propensity for shameless lies and pursuing the bit at all costs, I’m not sure I believe her.
I shoot Mordacity a skeptical look and say, “Okay, prove it. What makes you a ‘wizard’ and not a witch or a magical girl? How do I know you’re not just messing with me?”
She taps her chin and muses, “If you think about it, we can only really know our own experiences, and even those can be manipulated. Is knowledge even attainable?”
I conjure a Pearl Princess figurine and throw it at her. “Killing you with hammers. Answer the goddamn question.”
Mordacity bats away the toy and snickers. “Alright, alright. But you asked for it.” She meets my gaze, grins, and says, “On Halloween, you went into the World of Glass with Howl, Harlequin, Ferromancer, Agatha, and Delilah, and in that other world you met Venus, Mars, and Hastur. The civilian names of Agatha and Bombshell are Eleanor and Hannah. Ferromancer is Erica. Howl is Gretchen, though you probably shouldn’t tell her you know that. Strix Striga, the champion of Minerva, is also Sophia Lane, the girl you’ve been madly in love with since she stopped you from killing yourself.”
I tense. I’d always suspected that Mordacity knew more of my interest in Sophia and Striga than she let on, but to know so much—to know everything—and spell it out so bluntly? “How do you know that?” I demand.
“And,” Mordacity continues without acknowledging me, “nearly every night, you dream of a city of bleached white stone, a bleeding sun, and a deep, dark pit. But something was different about your dream last night, wasn’t it? You saw something new.”
“What? What do you—” I’m interrupted by a sudden headache. It’s a bolt of pain exactly like I felt when Amaranth first mentioned the dream of the pit to me. It’s the sting of remembering something I wasn’t supposed to.
The city. The sun. The pit. But flying overhead, silhouette just barely visible as it crossed in front of the bleeding sun, was a black-feathered bird. A raven. I know it was a raven with absolute and inexplicable certainty.
A raven that laughed like Mordacity laughs now, croaking and cawing as she twirls her raven-headed staff. Her eyes shine with impish glee. “Did you think it was Jupiter sending those dreams? Did you think it was the Yapper in Yellow? Nah. It was
me,
A. I wove the dream that woke so many of your peers to the existence of the World in Glass, forging a connection that the clever among you have used to gain sight beyond sight. But no one sees as much as me.” Her grin widens. “I know the secrets of every dreamer. Even a mind as disciplined as Striga’s can’t maintain its defenses within the chaos of a dream.”
My hackles raise, but I hesitate, paralyzed by the enormity of what I’ve just learned. Mordacity sent the dreams. Mordacity knows everything that the dreamers know—that Striga knows, that Howl knows, that the Morrigan knows. She’s playing a game that none of us even knew was on the table. “How is that even possible?” I ask. “If the Jovians could do something like that—”
“But they can’t,” she cuts me off. “Neither can the egregores. They all lack the imagination to cast a spell not given to them by the Fucker in Flax. That should be of interest to you, given they’re all standing in the way of your peaceful life with Sophia. A weapon they can’t use is exactly what you need to beat them. I like your plan, by the way. Turning yourself into bait for Venus? Hilarious. Of course, once her hooks are in you and the connection is established, you do need a way to take advantage of that. You might enjoy Striga putting her spear in you, but it’ll be a fairly short-lived pleasure.”
I flinch. I haven’t told anyone about that, haven’t said a word of it out loud, haven’t written it down. “Fuck, you really can read minds. That’s terrifying, M.”
Of all my friends, Mordacity has always been the one who knew me best. I always had the sense that she knew more than she was letting on about my feelings for Sophia and Striga, even though there was no way she could have known what I knew. Except, she did know. She’s known everything, all along.
This is inarguably a gross violation of privacy. I should probably feel a sense of betrayal, but all I feel is exasperated. Maybe I’ve just known her too long. If any of my other friends came to me with this reveal, I’d act differently, but it’s Mordacity; of course she’d do this.
Mordacity laughs and steps back onto the roof railing, then hops off so she’s back at eye level with me. “Thanks. Now let’s have the rest of this conversation somewhere brighter.”
“Wait, what?”
Mordacity extinguishes the fireball she was holding, then lunges forward and grabs my hand. I blink and we’re not in Forks.
Daylight pours through the gaps in clouds over great edifices of concrete, glass, and steel. Advertisements play over every surface in paper, paint, and electronic screens. It’s almost like the most urban parts of downtown Forks, but there’s one key difference: everything is in a language that I can’t read but find extremely familiar. People bustle past on a busy street, no one seeming to notice how we’ve emerged out of thin air. And almost everyone I see is—
“Welcome to glorious Nippon,” Mordacity says with an exaggerated bow, holding onto her hat. Straightening up, she adds, “Specifically, we’re in Akihabara, which is part of Tokyo.”
I shake off my disorientation and the questions come tumbling out. “Are you insane? Did you just teleport us to Japan? Why? How? What about all the people who just saw us appear? And again,
how the hell
did you—”
“I’m a wizard that’s sick with it,” Mordacity cackles. “Goated,
with
the sauce. Anyway, don’t worry about the civvies; I’m very, very good at manipulating the veil. No one will notice anything wrong even if I walk up to someone and summon a fireball in their face. Now c’mon, we’ve got places to be!”
She tugs on my arm and drags me down the street, ignoring my protests, until stopping outside a building that has me recoiling in fascination and horror. It’s a white and pink monstrosity, its facade sculpted to resemble ribbons. A poster next to it has the English words “Welcome home!” above a picture of a Japanese girl in a frilly maid uniform.
Mordacity pulls me inside. “Behold! Akihabara’s top-rated maid cafe. Perfect for a pair of loser weebs.”
“Oh, I hate you. I hate you so much. You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” I accuse.
She turns to the maid girl approaching us and starts talking in rapid-fire Japanese. I didn’t even know she could
speak
Japanese beyond honorifics and meme words.
We’re swiftly seated and given menus. Luckily, they’re in both English and Japanese. In a fugue state, goaded on by Mordacity, I order omurice and a caramel latte. She gets herself two slices of cake and a soda. It’s four in the afternoon here, but my internal clock is running on Washington time. Why am I eating a rice omelette at midnight?
The maid cafe experience is so disorienting that it actually manages to distract me from Mordacity being a wizard for a few minutes. I’m used to customer service voice from food workers, but this is a whole new level. It’s not just a bit of politeness, there’s
deference
here. The maids call everyone by titles and say and do everything with an unsettling degree of obsequiousness. They play it up as cute, and maybe that would’ve worked on me if I was five years younger—hell, if I was one year younger; it’s not like I had a lot of dignity before I took Pandora’s deal—but now it just makes me uncomfortable. The clientele in this cafe are mostly guys sitting alone, their ages varying from the teens to a few men in their late forties. The way some of them look at the exclusively youthful employees makes my skin crawl.
It’s the same thing we’re selling in Visage, isn’t it? Just a different flavor. Sassy instead of subservient, but we still exist to be consumed.
Mordacity chuckles at my discomfort, watching me watch the maids and guests. “Not really like the version that exists in your head from watching anime, is it? The desperation’s a little too palpable. That’s why I like it, actually; that sharp tang of disappointment when you realize the difference between fantasy and reality. You could call the people who come here pathetic, or you could call them lonely. Are they the victims of a workaholic society, or are they failures to adapt that take it out on others? And what about the girls who fill those uniforms? Are
they
victims, or just savvy operators getting that bread through any means necessary?”
I roll my eyes at her speech; I’ve heard it before in a dozen variations. “Yeah, yeah. Can we skip to the part where you actually explain what’s going on? I’ve got a billion questions, M. How did you become a wizard? What does it
mean
to be a wizard? What do you know about the egregores?” I hesitate. “And… do you know how I can kill a god?”
Mordacity daintily picks at her cake, which is very funny to watch when I’m used to her devouring everything put in front of her like a starving ghoul. “I can answer two of those questions at once: a wizard is someone who learned magic the hard way. While your kind bargained for mantles and the egregores were born into their powers, I
studied
to be able to cast spells. You lot are running on automatic; all of my magic is manual control.”
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; any instances of this story on Amazon.
For a moment, I draw a surreal parallel between this encounter and my first lunch with Ferromancer. Two conversations about magic in two public eateries, just with very different histories and atmospheres. “What about Hastur?” I wonder aloud. “I guess she’d be in the wizard camp—the manual users?”
Something cold seeps into Mordacity’s smile. Her eyes turn flinty. “Yes, that’s one way to describe the Leech in Lemon. Listen, A, I know you have a lot of questions, but… can I take a moment to monologue? I’ve got some groundwork I want to lay, so I’d appreciate your patience.”
I squint at her. Sincerity and Mordacity are mortal enemies, but she seems earnest right now. This is clearly important to her. “Fine. Go on.”
She drums her fingers on the table. “You’ve been to the twin of our reality, a dimension shaped by the emotions and beliefs of willful, imaginative minds. The Suzerain in Saffron calls that place the World of Glass, but I have a better name for it: Pandemonium, the realm of chaos from which all demons are born. And
chaos
is the key. Manipulating chaos—applying order, structure, a pattern—is the essence of magic—and everyone is constantly doing it. Our myths, our stories, our conspiracies, all of it influences Pandemonium—just not very strongly. It takes thousands of minds dreaming in concert to make anything of significance happen over there. Seven billion of us couldn’t bring the World of Glass closer—couldn’t grasp Pandemonium and bring its magic across the barrier between dimensions—no matter how hard we wished. Humans have dreamed about magic for the entire history of our species. How many times have we tried to claim it through some ritual or another? How many attempts at sorcery, at divination, at calling forth entities from beyond? All for nothing. And then one demiurge did the job in a single evening. She sauntered over, planted herself down, and remade the whole world. Like it was easy. Like it was natural for her. Like her perspective mattered more to that realm than the collective desires of all humanity.”
I’ve known Mordacity for a long time. When she’s just a little angry, she’ll snap and bite like the rest of us. But when she’s well and truly
furious,
she goes cold. She might still be smiling, but this is the angriest I’ve ever seen her. She hates Hastur.
“How did you learn magic?” I ask softly. “How did you come to understand the World of Glass?”
Mordacity relaxes and pushes her plates to one side, both thoroughly cleaned of cake. She reaches into the air and pulls a book out of nothing, then slams it down on the table in front of her. The book is dark green, its pages slightly yellowed.
Its cover calls it the
Necronomicon
by Abdul Alhazred.
I stare at my best friend and contemplate stabbing her. “Listen, M. I don’t think I want to leave you on top of a mountain anymore, not now that I know you can teleport. Instead, I want to
throw you
into the mountain and drop an avalanche on your head. How are you still fucking with me? How many bits did you prepare for this stupid conversation?”
Mordacity cackles and pulls off the cover, revealing it as a custom-printed dust jacket over a much more sensible-looking leatherbound grimoire. “C’mon, A, you know I live for the bit. Besides, the book didn’t come with a name, so I had to name it myself. I think I did a good job.”
I groan. “You’re going to pull that thing open and the inside is going to be like, a transcript of
Homestuck
that you had someone bind and artificially weather. You goblin.”
“Fuck, that would’ve been an awesome bit. Alas, this is a genuine tome of forbidden arcane knowledge.” She flips the book open.
The pages of the tome are written in English, or maybe just a sequence of Latin letters that vaguely resemble the shape and patterns of English. Between blocks of text are strange symbols that seem to writhe and twist on the page. The letters writhe with them and shift into different patterns—more recognizable patterns—that call to me—that I know I could understand if I just looked at in the right way, just kept peering deeper into the page, deeper into the spiral of ink to the heart of their secrets hidden just beyond reach, if I could only—
Mordacity snaps the tome shut and my mind returns to me, harrowed by my brush with a font of arcane madness. “Real spellbook, one of only a handful in existence. Very dangerous. I like to think of it as more of a libram than a grimoire. I managed to get my hands on it years ago and it has
taken
years to master even a handful of its secrets. Pain to study, but the ability to reshape reality with my will and imagination has been well worth the blood and bile.”
My head is still dizzy from staring into the libram.
Is that even a real word? I’m going to look that up later and find out she pranked me with another nerd term, aren’t I?
My best friend has a tome of eldritch knowledge and she’s using it to fuck with me, because that’s who she is. I shake my head to clear it and try to focus on what matters. “How can I do what you do?” I ask. “Teleporting, weaving dreams, actively veiling, that’s all high-level magic—the kind of magic that would be good to have if I’m going to tangle with the top dogs of the World of Glass. How can I learn to cast spells like you do? Can you help me find a spellbook of my own?”
“You don’t have the time for it,” Mordacity says bluntly. “It took me
years,
A. You’ve got less than one before it all goes down. What you
can
do is keep stretching the limits of your mantle. I can help with that. Once you understand what a mantle really is and how it works, you’ll have an easier time altering its nature.”
I grumble and sip my latte. “What’s a mantle, then?”
“A set of training wheels. A black box. A machine that translates simple intent into something more complicated. A mantle is a conceptual structure that shapes order from chaos. The kind of magic that I do—that the Bitch in Brass does—we have to impose that order by hand. When I cast a spell, I reach into the chaos of Pandemonium and manipulate it directly. I have to dictate every detail of what the spell is meant to do. A mantle does that for you. There are certain spells etched into each, patterns woven into the whole. Mars and Venus scavenged the mantles—pieced them together from whatever patterns they could get their hands on. They’re crude in design, but effective. The conceptual space around the mythological figure of Prometheus has enough weight to stitch together certain patterns of transformation and creation that form the basis of your spells as a witch.”
I hum to myself. “So, one magical girl being able to throw fire while another summons ice, those are, what, the patterns written into their mantle? Why can someone like Amaranth only move fast while Herbalist and Lilith get all kinds of ritual effects?”
“Not all mantles are created equal,” Mordacity says with a smirk. “You know about the Catastrophes. The difference between your mantle and a D-lister’s mantle is that you got a computer and she got scrap metal. Mantles like yours and Ferromancer’s started out more complex, capable of holding more patterns, while the reject mantles start simple and have a hell of a time growing. Even then, there are compromises; Lilith’s versatility comes at the cost of prep time and ritual components, two ways her mantle has to compensate for its absurd pattern storage. Morrigan and Howl can both do a lot more than their mantles were designed for, but they got there by slowly stretching their wings and bending their limits. Teaching your mantle new tricks in steady increments lets you keep the training wheels on for longer, and you
need
the training wheels. The whole point of a mantle—aside from its tithe to the egregores—is to reduce how much work you have to do to cast spells.”
I lean back in my chair and pick at the sad remains of my omelette. “This is… a lot. I feel like I’m going to need a week just to process it all. At the same time, I can’t help but notice that you’ve left out certain details. Where did you get that book, M? How did you get it? And why did you wait until
now
to tell me that you’re a wizard? What game are you running?”
She chuckles. “You know me, A, I’ve always gotta play the wild card. You think I’m gonna spill all my secrets in one conversation? The Carny in Canary is still setting up her grand play. Leave me a few twists for the third act, yeah?”
Of course she would be like this. I can’t even really be mad because
of course
Mordacity would do this to me. Still, I have an idea to appeal to her unique sensibilities. “Okay, I get that, but consider this: you love spoilers. Didn’t you once tell me that you prefer to read a movie’s TV Tropes page before you watch it for the first time? Plus, dropping a third act reveal early in the play would make a headache for Hastur, and I’m getting the distinct feeling that you really don’t like our
Gamemaster in Gold.”
“That’s actually an incredibly tempting argument,” Mordacity admits. “Like, it genuinely pains me that I have to reject it, because that is a banger. I
would
love doing that. But my reasons for keeping these secrets are too important to be swayed. Good effort, A.”
I sigh. “Man, who can I even talk to about this? Not the nerds on Discord unless your spell works across the internet. Not Sophia without first revealing my identity to her.”
“You can talk to me,” Mordacity says cheerfully. “I’ll be around more often now that we’ve gotten the big reveal out of the way. Though, we should probably bring
this
conversation to an end. You don’t want to stay up too late and break your sleep schedule only two days before your big date, do you?”
Oh shit.
I bolt upright.
It’s almost date night. Aquarium time. Sophia time.
“Fuck, you’re right, I need to get home.”
“I’ll send you back,” Mordacity assures me. “I’ll be staying here for a bit longer; I have some business in the area.”
I squint at her suspiciously. “This ‘business,’ would it happen to involve raiding more cosplay cafes or buying anime merch?”
“The schemes of a wizard are inscrutable. But, before I send you on your way, I do want to give one last bit of advice. You asked me how to kill a god, earlier. It’s a question I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about.” The cold anger is back in the twist of her smile and the light of her eyes. “Perhaps there’s a way to tear an egregore along its aspects, turning love against beauty to rip Venus in half. Perhaps you could make another god in place of one, usurping Mars as the preeminent god of war. But I think the best way to kill a god is to eat it. Devour them whole. Take everything they have. There’s a song lyric that’s been stuck in my head: ‘Anything can be eaten/Even if you say no.’ Give them hell, A. And good luck.”
Then she taps my hand and I’m back in Forks, seated at one of the tables on the rooftop terrace. Home. The fireworks have petered out, though the night sky is still clear.
I sit there for a little while longer, thinking about Sophia and how to kill a god.

5.1 The Masks We Wear