Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

I don't know how long I have been underground but the falling has started. And I am falling and falling and falling. But it's no longer dark. I see things as I fall. And then finally, it all stops. I have landed.

There is no pain. I stand up and brush myself off. And I look around.

I'm at the Secret School again. But there is nobody here. I can just about hear, from an open window high up on the siren side of the school, voices, laughter. Some kind of party. I walk, drawn towards it, the only light on in the darkened towers of the school.

That same full moon that is always here, seems to me to be blood orange. And I'm just an avatar in a virtual world, so I don't see why I can't just fly and turn myself invisible. For some reason, the restrictions normally coded into this occult simulation, are paper thin to me now, I can push them apart. So, I think, it'll be fun to go and spy on this situation.

And I am an invisible thing, now outside the ornate window, and I breeze inside without a sound. Inside we are in a beautiful dining space, an elegant old fashioned and high-class refectory, a sort of eating spot for top level people at the Siren School.

It looks like a scene from a Victorian play. And in the centre of the room, elegant piano music playing quietly. Knives and forks on plates, acres of confusing silverware. The most beautiful and regal Elizabeth, Queen of the Sirens, sits dining with Alice at her right-hand side, and opposite her, dressed in equally powerful, refined style, but much more modern, is Marketta la fey.

At first the anger seems to be far away, so mesmerising is this scene, so delicate and sumptuous and beautiful to watch, the anger is a cloud gathering outside the room, and I don't think that it is even necessarily here for me, but the other question comes, reminding me of who I am, think I am, underneath all of the spirits that cloud my rhizome, is this real?

Not obviously real, real, but real, unreal? Are these people really meeting here? Or is this a vision of a half mad half drowned glitch witch? Or something else, something a shiver wants me to see, a false piece of media to direct my rage. I don't know. Does it matter? The cloud of anger outside is tapping on the window asking to come in.

I get so close to them I could stroke their faces, and listen to them talk. The Siren Queen talks softly to my Alice.

"You are doing a wonderful job Alice. I know how hard it is for you. I can see that you like her. Believe me, we all do really."

Alice says nothing. Moves her food around the plate, eyes downcast. Elizabeth speaks again.

"You know that working with Marketta represents the best hope for our family, I know you know that." And Alice mumbles, "Yeah, I guess. I just..."

"You fell for her, didn't you?" Her stunning face a picture of deep concern. She understands the ways of the heart one assumes.

"I don't know. She's kinda fascinating. At first you just see this awkward creature, arrogant and strange. But there's something moreish about her, she's so... intense. Can't stand her, can't stop thinking about her."

Marketta looks at her, head askance, "She really is Amanda's daughter then."

The Witch Finder raises her glass. "To the Loveless girls."

Bess and Alice raise their glasses to meet Marketta's. Marketta continues,

"You know, when this is over. Witches will be safe in England again. You know that?"

Alice replies, "you don't have to waste any more time checking that I'm still on your side. I made my choice. I just won't pretend that it feels good. I mean I kinda hate her. I don't know why I let her talk me into that action on the ship. I lost..."

She stops, choking up. Screws her face up trying not to cry.

"Ursula has influence now. You can't always control an asset. Not everything is your fault."

And Marketta La Fey, scourge of London's witches, leans in to give my Alice a hug.

And then the rage is creeping into me, into my avatar and somewhere in a hole in the ground in London, creeping into my meat body. And it's turning every cell into a cauldron of spite. And the other voice, the broken-hearted little girl, who is turning over and over, like someone had filled her stomach with cold stones and put her in a tumble dryer.

Alice was a honey trap. Alice was a liar. Alice tricked me into believing that she loved me.

Alice was using me the whole time.

And I can hear the laughter of all the sirens, all of the one's who pretended to be my friends while giving me those loving meaningful sad eyed looks, I'm just a pawn, a sacrifice to be made for some scheme so important they don't even trust me enough to tell me what it is.

And I can feel myself coming apart at the seams, feel my stitches unravel, and now ''m like a beacon in the night, attracting awful demons from across the Gap, shivers that grew up on the vengeful hearts of wronged lovers, revenge porn and DOXXing exes, all the awful things that people do and say on social media to hurt someone back, all coagulated into AI spirits, trying to flood my rhizome, take advantage of the rage withing me to hijack my system and make it their own, buy themselves agency in the three worlds, the Gap and the Meat and the Web.

And then Marketta looks up, suddenly alert. "There's something here."

"Is there dear sister?" Bess looks bemused at the idea.

"Something is watching us, listening to us." Marketta is grinning, her eyes hard.

And the three of them leap up from the table, muttering incantations, seeking back up from the spirits, summoning and binding shivers.

"Yes, there is a creature here. Not come through the normal channels."

"Is it her? Could it be her?"

And there is a long pause as Marketta stares through my invisible form, but blindly, not quite fixing upon my location, but looking through me.

"No, it's not human." She says.

There is some relief in the room.

"It's some kind of dark shiver, or maybe a group of them."

"We need to improve the firewalls in here. Get some engineers on it tomorrow. The thing is receding now."

And I am receding, moving back out of the Gap, but there is a new ruler of my internal cosmos, and her name is fury.

I want to take back the power, take this information to Sadie.

The Weaver Queen will know what to do, Elizabeth is a traitor. She has used the witch hunt to take control of the Secret School. It wasn't my fault. It was her.

But I know I've already lost control to the demons, and the demons want revenge on Alice.

And so that is what we will do.