Sworded Affair

Thankfully, the number of messages Emma had to sort through wasn't actually as bad as the top line suggested. While there were indeed 1121 individual messages, most of them were automated messages from the administration, repeating at one minute intervals and reporting the same thing: a total loss of connection. Clearly, the disruption to the Weave had been poorly received, resulting in a flood of diagnostics into her inbox. Emma clicked a handful at random, and upon finding nothing of substance, she created a folder specifically for them, followed by a rule to send all future messages from the admins there as well. Just like that, over a thousand messages became less than fifty, a far more reasonable number to have to deal with.

"More spam?" Emma raised an eyebrow; after her experiences in simulated China, she was altogether rather unimpressed with the idea of Eligible Young Masters Near You!

[I'm not sure who those are intended to fool, since no Sect worth their salt would agree to anything formal without at least half three face-to-face meetings and half a dozen assassination attempts.]

Emma did still have a quest involving the Far East, thanks to her inheritance from Sectmaster Horizon, but she was pretty sure there weren't any answers to be found here, and so deleted the message. Three dozen other messages quickly followed, offering everything from discount dragonskin boots to 'genuine' aphrodisiacs from Sappho's personal stash. Some of these scams, she'd already seen the last time around, while others were new, but none of them were worth keeping in the end.

"Who even bothers making these?" Emma had to wonder, after clearing the last of the junk mail, leaving not a single legitimate message of note in her inbox. "If England only has a few thousand practitioners or higher, doesn't that imply less than a million worldwide, assuming the same ratio is kept? Is there even a market for these kinds of scams?"

[Probably not, in this day and age, but the situation wasn't always so cut and dry. Remember, whilst there are less than one hundred thousand magicals worldwide, many have friends and families in the know, and many times that number in employees, all of them drawn from the mortal world. Add on the ancillary services, and we're talking several million people at a guess. These days, the average employee will have a good understanding of internet scams, and even then they still find victims, so imagine how it was back in the 1800s, when a servant could be given access to the Weave to manage the family affairs, having only used pen and parchment to communicate long-distance until then. The first few decades were heaven for opportunist criminals, and the trend has endured in some fashion to this day.]

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Let me guess, most of the scammers are from abroad, making it hard to track them down and stop them?" Emma rolled her eyes, having sat through enough computer safety classes to have a general picture of things.

[They take measures to hide themselves, as do all criminals. Could we root them out and destroy them? Sure. Is it worth the effort it would take? Absolutely not.]

"Business as usual," Emma chuckled.

Whilst a bit annoyed at the lack of anything worthwhile, she was also happy not to be spending an entire afternoon dealing with spam, as she had initially feared, so it all evened out in the end. Unlocking her bedroom door, Emma wasted no time heading back into the common area, to see what her parents had gotten up to in the meantime. The answer, as it turned out, was the same thing as herself. Emma hadn't been the only one who received a flood of mail, the Weave's outage having been universal. Accordingly, she found both her parents sitting opposite one another at the kitchen table, completely ignoring each other in the manner typical of families in the smartphone era.

Noah leaned back in his seat, his eyes unfocused in the familiar manner of users interacting with the System. Elizabeth, being bereft of such built-in communications, instead sat upright, glaring intensely into a handheld mirror, one that showed not her face but rather brief flickers of light. It meant nothing to Emma, but Elizabeth was reacting to it, her eyes flicking this way and that, so she assumed it was some form of code that she was able to decipher. Emma went to grab a seat of her own, only to pause as she got within arm's length of Elizabeth, and the latter's mirror sputtered and faded, no longer showing anything except a simple reflection.

"Um, did I do that?" Emma blinked as her Mom turned her way.

"Are you using some form of anti-magic?" Elizabeth asked, shaking her mirror to no avail. "The connection dropped as soon as you arrived."

"Hold on," Emma replied, bringing her status screen up to double check.

[Null Zone (Toggle: OFF)]

"No, it's off," Emma replied, unsure what was going on,

She took a few steps back, and the mirror returned to life, only to die again when she approached anew.

"It's cutting off as soon as you come into sight," Elizabeth reported, a puzzled expression on her face. "Are you sure you don't have anything else that might be concealing you?"

"...There is one trait which might be relevant," Emma realised after a minute, scrolling down to the relevant entry.

[Rorschach's Blot: Attempts to observe you remotely produce nonsensical images to those bearing ill-intent. You will be alerted when observation commences.]

"It blocks me from being spied on by anyone with ill-intent, though it should also have alerted me in this case." Emma frowned. "Who exactly were you talking to, just now?"

Elizabeth looked rather embarrassed all of a sudden, as she tucked her mirror away.

"Just an old family friend, one I've known since I was your age. I confess, she's always been eager for gossip, especially about you and Felix, but she means well."

"Uh huh," Emma deadpanned. "Is she going to be here for the Solstice? Because I get the feeling I might need to talk to her about privacy and boundaries."

"Well…"