Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 25

I force myself not to throw up. I do what I'm told. I lie on my back with my head touching Vash and Ty's heads. We are a circle in thirds, heads together and feet 120 degrees apart. I close my eyes. I feel their fingers seeking mine, until our hands are locked together. Then my senses explode all at once. I lose myself in a flood of new data. I drown in it. Silence. A minute passes, or a year. Not sure which.

Then rolling thunder. Far away. Not thunder. Words. A voice. Vashni's voice. Not far away. A face like the moon, emerging in the middle of my viewport, my eye holes full up of it. She's gradually getting louder, like a sine wave coming up to its crescendo.

"Ursula!"

She is shouting. Guess she does that a lot. And I realise I'm having some kind of freak out. Guess I do that a lot. Floating on a wave of sensory information.

Then it's sort of breaking, it's washing away. I feel sea sick. And I'm in a tight bear hug. Ty and Vash are holding on to me. Looking over their shoulders it all comes into view, and I know I'll never forget that first look at it all, nor the strangest feeling that I've been there, maybe always been there. A place I've been to in dreams. My mother's house has many rooms.

"We're in the gap. Drink it in. Take your time." Vash says, as she finally lets me go.

"It's our first time too." Ty says, looking around.

"Yeah you can't get in here without a coven. Takes all three of us to make a door."

We're on the shore of a great lake, wine dark water, and across it passes an enormous and ornate bridge. Hundreds, if not thousands of people drift across it in both directions. There are crowds milling around, most heading towards the other side. Some stand hanging over the ornate railings like little girls playing pooh sticks.

Everything is more intense. Amplified. Pregnant with magic. And the people. They're so strange. Like characters from an MMO game. With pets and bizarre animated skins and all kinds of ways of moving and being I never saw before.

We drift in a daze across the bridge, following the flow of avatars. I've been in metaspaces before of course, but I've never known detail like this, immersion like this. My eyes drift across the black water of the lake.

And then I catch a glimpse of something immense, some kind of vast crustacean moving deep beneath the surface, catching some of the gaslight from the lamps that line the bridge.

"Look." Vash tugs my arm. I follow her pointing finger.

And over the bridge the most... oh my god I cannot even describe... the strangest, the sweetest, the oldest thing I've ever seen, the school, the secret school.

Two towers. One with its doors open, the other with its doors closed. Above the towers the biggest fattest full moon, and a quadrangle with a stage between the two towers where a large crowd gathers. On either side of the towers the building seems to stretch on to the horizon, impossibly large. And beyond all that there are dark forests and mountains.

And the building is like every fantasy of an ancient school you've ever had, because it is of course, made, stitched out of every scrap of fantasy and dream that kids have ever had of a magical school for magical people.

And I know, in the rational part of my frontal lobes, that this is just a big ass piece of software.

And yet, I also feel, in the ancient bones of my brain, in the core of my hypothalamus, that this is the most ancient building, older than humans, older than buildings and if you wander its corridors for long enough, you will find yourself having dinner with the elder gods.

Ty and Vash make eye contact and pull a face, I catch it, tipping them off to just wait, let me have my little moment. I must look pretty silly, in a state of bona fide jaw dropping absolute awe.

"We don't have all day, Sula. Time passes here just like it does in meatspace." Ty gently pressures me to focus.

"We need to get formally accepted to the school, or the Weaver's will drop us like a hot potato." Adds Vash

"And then we're just trapped under a pile of washing machines waiting for the hunting dogs to come back." Says Ty

And I manage to mutter, "C'mon. I'm ready, let's go."

My voice sounds weird.

"I wish we had more time for training together, before this." Vash sounds a little sad.

I'm starting to realise that we are not out of the woods. Will the witch cult really reject us?

And then I'm flooded all of a sudden with this sensory input I wasn't expecting. I feel the weight of my school bag on my shoulders. All this data, all at once, the feel of my clothes on my skin, a breeze. A breeze!? What kind of a sim is this? But I collapse into a giggling fit. A school bag!? A school bag!? What is going on here!!?

And the absurdity of it, it is reluctantly acknowledged by my coven, the other two fully surrender and we giggle like fools in a heap for some time before Vash starts up with the impatient noises. So that is how I end up walking with my new coven siblings over the hidden bridge, trying not to look when the carapace of some enormous ungodly crustacean appears in the deep of the lake. Too many questions.

Sometimes the school looks infinite. Sometimes the size of a normal school. And the women around us, mostly women, mostly young, are from all corners of the world by the looks of it, by the sounds of the voices chatting away in dozens of languages.

"So how exactly do we get into the secret school? Is there like a test?"

I'm feeling confident. Impressing people at fancy schools is kinda my thing.

But Vash and Ty are frozen, staring at me.

"You're joking."

"I'm really not."

"You really have no idea how to do this?"

And I feel my heart sinking as I realise that Ty is shaking and Vash is trying not to cry. 

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