Volume 5, Prologue: Visitor from Picture Book Land - Girl_Name_is_“ALICE”.
You might only have 1580 yen left in your wallet and the ATMs might all be shut off for New Year’s, but the sun still rises in the morning.
December 29 had arrived.
“Ugh,” groaned spiky-haired Kamijou Touma, waking up in his bathtub. The mornings were really starting to scare him of late. When the morning arrived, it meant a new day had begun. When a new day began, it meant he had living expenses to pay. And he was very seriously approaching his limit there. He had of course gone the route of cabbage core garnished with parsley, carrot, and radish skins. Fish heads? Those were such a luxury that the 15cm god and the starving nun beast played rock paper scissors over who got them. He had used every trick in the book, but he doubted it was going to get him through to January 4 when the ATMs would be back up and running. With all such bank functions stopped, he couldn’t rely on the seasonal miracle known as New Year’s money from his parents.
He was so starved that lying on his back with the blanket over him made him look a lot like a dead bug drying out on the floor.
(The cat can get by on the leftover pet food Fukiyose returned with him, but the problem is feeding me, Index, and Othinus. I might have to get through New Year’s by asking Komoe-sensei for some teacakes during my supplementary lessons.)
At any rate, a pity party in the tub wasn’t going to get him past this crisis. And he would only be placing the noose around his own neck if he failed to visit Tsukuyomi Komoe’s apartment and acquire a valuable supplementary source of nutrition there. That small teacher had canceled her own private winter vacation to help her student, so she might cry for real if she learned that was his primary reason for showing up. Still, he couldn’t let this chance slip through his fingers if he was going to survive the day.
Kamijou Touma decided to finally get out of the cramped tub.
However.
“What the-?”
He noticed a sweet aroma. Uh, oh, he thought. Was he so hungry the soap and shampoo were starting to smell appetizing to him? His lack of money was reaching truly dire territory.
“H-how is Index doing? And Othinus? They haven’t died, have they?”
He was suddenly very worried, but he couldn’t call out to them. It wasn’t an issue of strength or willpower, though. He was afraid that raising his voice would lead to an answer he didn’t want. What if he yelled and shouted from the bottom of the cold bathtub and received no response, like the building was abandoned? Those girls wouldn’t be the only ones to perish. If no one could hear him, he would be stuck here. Since he had managed to keep an unauthorized girl living with him here without getting in trouble, the adults clearly weren’t going to break down the door and investigate the place just because no one had been in or out in a few days. In other words…was it possible all three of them would be found mummified after winter break was over?
“Are you kidding me? This is serious! I refuse to be the hottest new rumor in town when school starts back up!!”
He was supposed to be too hungry to move, but he felt new strength welling up deep inside him. At the same time, he was weirdly certain that this was the final resistance he would be able to muster. He needed to get up, unlock the bathroom door, and collapse into the living room. Otherwise his name would go down right alongside the Kuchisake-onna and Hasshaku-sama. No, if he was all dried up, wouldn’t he be more like High Priest and Nephthys!?
However…
“Nyah☆”
Did…
Did he just hear a strange noise from below the blanket?
In fact, that sweet aroma wasn’t coming from the bath products at all. There was clearly something else under the blanket. Eh? What’s this? This is a completely different kind of horror than I had in mind. He began to panic.
It was in the bathtub with him and under the blanket with him. He had forgotten he had only just woken. His thoughts were whizzing by so fast her feared he would burn out his brain as he reached out a nervous hand, grabbed the edge of the blanket, stopped, hesitated, and was too scared to continue. But he was too scared not to continue either, so he took a peek below.
His eyes met those of a strange girl. She looked maybe 12.
“Who?”
She still looked sleepy. She lay face down on top of him, so her face was shockingly close. So close his eyes had trouble focusing on it. She had long blonde hair, white skin, and sapphire blue eyes. She stirred, which was enough for more of that sweet aroma to reach him.
“Who are you?” he asked, his voice scratchy.
“Nyawn? The girl’s name is Alice.”
Between the Lines 1
They had arrived in the middle of a bright green rainforest.
More than ten million hectares of the planet’s forests were lost every year, but this was one of the few secluded areas that remained inviolable.
It existed upstream of a river that wound its way across several national borders.
“This is the place?”
A girl had her long strawberry blonde hair done up in several fried shrimps and sometimes wore a leotard and sometimes a long red dress roughly held together at her chest depending on her mood. Her name was Anna Sprengel and she looked up at something in partial exasperation.
It looked like a modern stadium.
The interior was flooded with water and a 100m cruise ship floated in the center.
“Is she not permitted to set foot on land or can she not mix her water with any other waters?”
“There’s no real reason for it,” said the girl in purple who was acting as Anna’s guide.
A ridiculously large yellow duck walked past them like some kind of joke, but the second girl, Aradia, only shrugged. She was the daughter of Lucifer and Diana who had taken physical form and descended to the human world as the goddess of all witches. She was a silver-haired girl who looked 17 or 18. She wore a wimple large enough to fall to her ankles, which gave her a nun-like silhouette, but she had bare feet and a bare navel thanks to a skimpy dancer’s outfit resembling a variation on the bikini.
The combination was of course meant to look immoral.
“There’s no real reason for her to have a single base like this. I don’t know if she was influenced by an American drama or what, but until recently she had created a prison on a remote island and was having fun there. The point is, it only has this form because this is what caught her interest. Before long, she might say she wants an elf forest or a magic school. She is not allowed a phone or tablet. The results would be dire.”
Countless bookcases were set up in the stadium’s tiered stands, but neither girl paid them any heed. Aradia’s pure gold decorations jingled like bells with every step she took to guide Anna out past the railing in the stands. They walked across the mirror-like water’s surface and placed their bare feet on the cruise ship’s deck.
The ship felt unusually lived in. Someone called this place home. Aradia casually pointed over at a young wife snacking on some ham in the kitchen.
“That there is good, old Mary. Not the Virgin Mary, mind you, but someone who took the name to hide her identity…or so the story goes. But her alchemy can produce miracles on the same level as the real one, so do be careful.”
She then pointed toward a beautiful horned and winged woman carrying a plastic bath set and humming on her way to the bath.
“That is the Bologna Succubus. One of the few demons officially recognized by the government of the time thanks to the court records. You see, a man in the Bologna region was found guilty of running a brothel of succubi in 1468. I know it sounds like a joke, but he was actually executed for it.”
“What a bunch of baloney.”
“You’re not much different yourself, are you? Me too, of course.” Aradia sighed softly while moving to show off her sexy figure. “Anyway, most of what you’ll find here is from books, but official documents and reports, personal letter and notes, and even eccentric scribblings aren’t exactly rare. You can use any of the bookcases and drawers you want, so just find some territory for yourself. I mean, that musty old book from around 2000 years ago features a few letters itself.”
Anna Sprengel smiled thinly.
“Letters and notes, hm? Hee hee.”
“Texts from correspondence lessons work too. You people liked that kind of thing, didn’t you?”
“Simple collections of knowledge don’t interest me as much as something like a Christian glassworker’s notebook detailing their stained glass designs. An excellent code can be a thing of beauty.”
“It doesn’t matter to me. Personally, I’m not interested in that newfangled cross.”
The Rosicrucian leader only shrugged.
These were those who passed down and provided guidance in magic. They were a collection of myths and stories that presented knowledge at its simplest. Which was exactly why their power would be strangely missing from the records kept by the Anglican grimoire library. For example, pursuing the Lemegeton and the Book of the Law would teach you all about the Modern Western Magic that Westcott and Mathers systemized and Crowley took for himself, but it wouldn’t teach you the lives and troubles of each and every member of the Golden cabal or the full truth of the worst conflict in magical history: the Battle of Blythe Road.
For example, there was a story known as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
But everyone who read that story would interpret it in their own way. It was the destructive genius Aleister Crowley himself who said it was a must-read for any student of magic who had sufficient knowledge of Kabbalah.
Aradia and the Bologna Succubus were the same. They were monsters who did not fall into the human categories of science side and magic side. Everyone here had a legend on the same level as Miss Sprengel and one among them reigned above the rest.
“Urban legends, huh?”
Anna sounded somewhat exasperated as she held her red dress up at her flat chest.
Then she smiled coldly, like she was looking at an elderly professor desperately trying to decipher some kind of code seen on the white walls of a padded room locked from the outside.
“It’s said the Bible is complexly coded and there are some very unusual ways to read it. But Alice is written in modern English, so is it a lot easier to analyze and rearrange?” freewebn(o)vel.com
“Again, I’m not interested in that nonsense. St. Vitus? St. Sebastian? You expect me to find anything of worth in people who reject the witches of a bygone era but readily appropriate those legends as a part of their own religion?”
Anna interpreted that as no more than lip service. She doubted Aradia was as fixated on the cross as she claimed. That was just the role she had to play. People expected her to be an advocate for all witches. Just like a ghost skeptic would deny any supposed existence of ghosts before even trying to look at it scientifically, Aradia’s position required her to always be skeptical of the cross’s power. This felt twisted and dangerous to Anna because it was like stubbornly refusing to recognize the existence of your greatest opponent. Like a firefighter with no fear of fire.
The goddess of all witches sounded perfectly carefree as she continued.
“You’re generally free to do what you want here. I won’t get in your way.”
“Is that so?”
“However.” Aradia paused suddenly, like she had sliced through the air with a blade. “Do not upset Alice. Follow that one simple rule and you can do whatever.”
“…”
Miss Sprengel was still smiling thinly. That legendary magician was as arrogant as they came, but she could be courteous as long as you did not thoughtlessly interrupt her explanations with a clear lack of desire to learn.
She recalled the giant duck. If Alice wanted one, the brilliant magicians here would gather at a single table and draw up the plans like it was critically important.
“The general public is apparently abuzz with talk about water and traces of life being discovered on a planet dozens of lightyears away, but how do you think that got there? That girl got upset and started throwing her ceramic pot, teacakes, and whatnot. Reality is a fickle thing,” said Aradia like all of this was perfectly reasonable. “I know telling a magician not to do something is a great way to ensure they do it, but I recommend resisting that contrarian urge just this once. I’m not trying to restrict you and I’m not testing your courage - this advice comes from legitimate concern for you. Also, there’s no point in listing out and comparing your specs. You cannot defeat Alice on a much more fundamental level than that. No matter what.”
Aradia wasn’t bragging.
She was simply explaining what she saw as a basic law of the universe.
“You really should greet Alice now. H. T. Trismegistus can wait. Once Alice gives her permission, none of the others will take issue with your presence. Oh, and don’t think you can avoid detection if you don’t go see her yourself. Alice is pure and innocent, but also capricious. But more than that, she’s cruel and violent. My point is…”
“No one can predict what she’ll do next?” freewebnov(e)l.com
“I’m glad you understand. Trying to soothe your silly pride will give you the same fate as a bug in the clutches of a small child, so now is the time to obediently bow your head.”
They descended to the very bottom of the ship.
Modern cruise ships had pools and theatres, but it was unlikely any of them had one of these.
They arrived at a circular colosseum.
However, the scent ruling this place was the polar opposite of excited blood and sweat.
It smelled of old paper. The strong oily scent likely came from parchment made from animal hide.
Anna could sense a great many presences here, but the place felt strangely void of life. Almost like a pyramid with the sole exit sealed by a heavy stone door. There was a large open space overhead, yet the great stillness of the place created the illusion that the air was entirely stagnant.
The center of the colosseum was what mattered.
A giant throne sat there. If a small girl were to sit there, her feet wouldn’t even reach the floor. The back was likely more than three times the sitting height of its master.
It was colored gold and red.
This colorful trial was simple and childish and would obliterate all who scoffed at it.
But time stopped for Aradia when she viewed the throne at the center of the world.
“She’s…”
She was the daughter of Lucifer and Diana. She was the goddess of all witches who had taken physical form to save the ancient priestesses of the night who were persecuted by the wealthy cross.
But here, she tore at her hair with both hands and raised her voice to a scream.
“She’s not here? Where has Alice gone now!?”
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