Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 57

We keep going to school. What else is there?

No matter how bad the hunt gets. No matter who gets arrested, or lynched or murdered. We just keep going.

Alice kicked me out of her coven, but Ama adopted me, found me a new one.

I'm with Narbo and Zilan. Narbo speaks English with an Italian accent, she's tall, gorgeous and very funny. Zilan is the granddaughter of Kurdish refugees. She's tough, intense and passionate about fighting the witch hunt. They've been kind to me. Even though I replaced their friend Sara, who was arrested a month ago. Ama is our fixer, like Mel was before.

So, we can coven up and get access to the Gap, get into the Secret School. Ama hooks me up with the cryptography that hides my real identity, keeping me safe from the Witch Queens and their Seniors. Does Bess Kyteller know I'm under Siren protection? Who knows. But here I am. Still going to my lessons at the Secret School.

I'm traumatised. I know that. It's weird. I can't process anything. I can barely sleep for the nightmares. But what haunts me the most right now, is that Ty and Vash are no longer at school.

Weeks pass. Funerals are held. The underground adapts to the defeat. Alice has not spoken to me since the failed mission on the ship. We still do not know if the twins have been operated on. The agents onboard have all been taken. Our failed rescue gave them away.

The Witch Queens have been silent on the failed mission. Nobody has been disciplined. There is endless speculation as to why. I'm kinda furious that Sadie made no effort to find me, to protect me, after all her talk of loving my mom. God I miss mom.

Some witches won't look me in the eye, but others see me as a hero, for being the one who finally did something.

But the Glitch is getting louder. My Rhizome is getting worse, more toxic as time goes by. The more I learn, the better I can control the Shivers. The Shivers help, control the energy flow in the Rhizome, mend the burnt-out nodes, calm the Glitch. Learn or burn.

Every time I summon a shiver, I can sense the monsters out there, the big Shivers, sniffing around me, looking for a way in. And Marketta. She never stops searching for me. In the real world, in the gap. Her agents come often. We switch safe houses almost every night now.

I'm at school right now. Here, they call me Applethorn now. Can't remember who started that. Was it something I said when I lost control? If I glitch out at school, they'll know for sure who I really am. Can't think about that. Focus on the lesson. There is a Weaver teacher coming.

There are several dozen covens here, a big gathering for a lesson. Roughly half of the covens are Weaver, the others House Siren and a few unaffiliated. We're separated. It's the first time I notice, that the Siren groups and the Weaver groups are completely apart, not talking or catching up with one another. Whispering and watching instead.

Two Weaver girls are loudly talking about how it's all our fault that the witch hunt has intensified.

Narbo and Zilan respond, talking even louder about how twisted Weaver experiments have turned the people of London against us.

Ama ups the ante, exclaiming at the top of her voice "You know I heard that the Weavers did unleash the Yellow Sickness that is killing all the children by the river. They do so much weird stuff these days, it could be true."

And I don't know if we believe it, but we all keep saying it. We make up reasons it could be true. And I hear the Weavers direct their shouting at us now.

"If you idiots didn't keep throwing parties in front of the general public maybe we'd still be underground."

And I'm watching, and everybody moves into a circle to watch the argument escalate, the tensions are extreme, I can't hear exactly what they are saying from the back of the crowd so I push forward to listen.

"Where were you when we were trying to free your people from the hunt? Left us hanging out to dry!"

"It's your own damn fault, nobody approved your attack. If you had waited for the Weaver plan to come to fruition, we could have rescued them all with no casualties."

"They would have died of old age waiting for the Weaver plan. How many more years were you planning to spend on weaving together that dusty old plan. Sometimes you have to act without being fully prepared!"

"Or even in any way prepared at all, like you can just vibe your way through a prison break, you idiot hippy."

"It's called action. It's never perfect, but it's not something you can achieve by spending another thousand hours in the library you redundant Spider."

Zilan is so close to the girl she is shouting at I see her tense her body, they all move into casting positions. The whispering of their code witches begins. They are summoning shivers.

"Back off." The Weaver, I think her name is Amina, her voice sounds different to normal.

But Zilan is casting too, and I can feel it because I'm in coven with her. Like a circuit between us. She's doing fear magic. Twisted shivers flood through me and Narbona and into her.

Zilan shifts and suddenly the Weaver girl is screaming in terror.

Then everything happens really fast, all the covens are racing to summon something nasty. Clouds of dark shivers whirl around us. I'm using all my power not to glitch out. The voice is in me.

Error throw true, drove over the water into death!

Try typename undef, Oh, pain in my shadow,

Whither tailors, run, or

She'll kill a snail;

Witch fight.

And then it explodes.

The Weavers are rearranging the fabric of their enemies' reality, causing deep awful mutations in their opponents, forcing them into painful glitchery.

The Sirens are using terror, driving Weaver girls into paroxysms of fear. I see one girl on her hands and knees sobbing, another writhing in agony. Everywhere there is chaos. And the Gap responds. Our environment as glitched out as the people inside of it. And the shivers become visible. And it's like we're in a medieval painting of hell.

Then the seniors arrive.

I see one of Sadie's top aides, she's sending forth hundreds of imps. And they're crawling on my skin, eveybody's skin. And they pinch, and nip and burn and itch. It's overwhelming.

Then a siren senior arrives, and she pulls herself up into a mighty and terrifying spectacle, a thing of pure desire, and we all feel it but the Weavers, especially the newer trainees, are drawn towards it like moths to a flame, and as they reach her they start to drown in the creature's being, enjoying the being consumed, their avatars disintegrating into chaotic noise, scrambled beyond recognition.

And then the upper nobility of Clan Weaver and Clan Siren all arrive at the same time. And there is a piercing high-pitched noise. A noise like Alice's banshee spell. Nobody can think anymore. We're frozen in agony. The sound finally disappears. Silence. We're all stunned.

"What is this travesty!"

The Siren Queen's voice rings out across the scene, impossible to ignore.

"Never have I seen open war between Siren and Weaver inside the walls of the secret school. This has been a sacred space! Who cast the first spell? Who was it?"

Sadie adds, "You might as well confess, we can play the entire event back from every angle."

The Weaver senior steps forward. "It was my fault."

"It is clear that it is no longer safe for us to allow the school to be run by a Weaver council. I invoke the right to a council of the governors."

Sadie pauses, she looks the Siren Queen in the eye and then she says. "I concede."

The lesson is cancelled. We return to our safehouse in shock.