Sworded Affair

Chapter 95 : Spamalot

[You have 2951 unread messages!]

"I think there's been a mistake," Emma deadpanned. "Unless there's another memory locked away where I spent a lot of time on magical social media."

[No, there's nothing like that. The Divine Conduit is causing a bit of mistaken identity, in this case. In ordinary circumstances, my account should have been deleted after my death, but well, you already know that the System is far from ordinary. That's fine, you can clear out what's left; there shouldn't be anything too sensitive in the messages, since the Weave was never deemed the right venue for discussing anything actually important.]

"Neither was Facebook, but that never stopped some people."

Despite a bit of grumbling, Emma didn't hesitate to start reading; she'd always valued neatness in her digital space, keeping notifications of all sorts at 0 or as close to it as possible. This had been a source of some mockery back at school from friends who saw no problem with leaving notifications at '999+'; but for Emma, seeing thousands of unread messages was verging on physically painful, and prompted her to begin tidying up immediately.

To nobody's surprise, a sizeable majority of the messages received consisted of spam. Tickets being touted for conferences and lessons featuring vague subjects like 'Building Charisma' and 'Holistic Self-Improvement', advertisements for potions promising a cure to every health condition she'd ever heard of (and many she hadn't until now), and hamfisted attempts to beg for money. The first half an hour was spent doing an initial pass, deleting all the obvious junk messages that required no further analysis beyond reading the title. That got the unread messages below 1500, albeit not as far below that mark as Emma would have liked. Next up was the far more laborious step of filtering out the spam which passed first muster: the kind that led with an innocuous title but grew increasingly deranged the further down a reader gets.

"For a small sum of five thousand Imperial Thrones, you can help me reclaim my Kingdom, whereupon I can will repay you..." Emma trailed off, gobsmacked.

[Oh yes, variants of the 419 scam go back long before the advent of the internet, or even the printing press. If you were to dig in the right places, you could find clay tablets from the Roman Empire, extolling wealthy citizens to pay the ransom of a wealthy citizen captured by pirates, who would return their goodwill a hundred fold upon returning to Rome. Very little in the world is original, especially where crime is concerned.]

"Wonderful," Emma shook her head, deleting the message and moving on, though not before questioning the one useful bit of it. "What's the Throne worth at the shops?"

[Similar to ten Pounds Sterling, as far as purchasing power is concerned. One Throne will get you a nice breakfast at a reasonably priced establishment, three for a good dinner excluding the cost of drinks. Ten for a night's stay at a hotel, and so on. All currency is in coinage; One, Five and Ten Throne coins at the top end, and Fifty, Twenty and Ten Swords to account for fractions.]

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"That's less complicated than I was expecting," Emma admitted. "That was always one of my least favorites part of Harry Potter, the currency and everything to do with goblins, but it was still memorable in its own way."

[Ugh, don't remind me. Pottermania was mostly harmless; perhaps even beneficial with the way it revitalised interest in old traditions and magic. I say mostly, because many people got it in their heads to try casting magic; including some who had the latent potential and succeeded. The first decade of the new millennium had more magical accidents on record than any since the Renaissance, and it was all thanks to Harry Potter.]

"Yikes," Emma grimaced, recalling her battle against an incredibly aggressive fungus over in Lower Swell. "At least you had professionals to deal with it?"

[Paradox oversees that department, yes. She rarely has to take direct action; but her stronger students all have some limited ability to rewind time, enough to deal with most minor accidents. It's easier to deal with issues as they come and reverse them, than to try and pre-empt with precognition; the latter is never perfect, and botched readings can cause more problems than they solve.]

Emma chewed over that as she slowly whittled the unread messages down below five hundred; deleting the remaining spam alongside anything that was obviously out of date, such as invitations to social events in the Ottoman Empire or to the Court of Queen Victoria. There were a lot of such invitations, many repeated yearly to no response, but never removed from the distribution list despite that. Eventually, two hours into the night, just under two hundred messages remained that required actual input of one kind or another.

[Delete anything referencing Asia, cultivation or Heaven. They're either too far afield to bother worrying about now, or currently beyond your ability to manage.]

That got rid of fifty or so messages, mostly invitations to attend tournaments and cultural exchange programs.

[Anything that makes your eyes hurt just reading the name can go in the bin as well. The passive effect denotes someone eldritch enough to drain your sanity up close, and tends to be a lot worse when experienced in person.]

Another thirty messages went in the trash, this time primarily from the Americas.

"Ew," Emma exclaimed as she opened another message, finding that someone had kindly sent an attachment of his genitals alongside a more generic invitation to a gourmet restaurant.

[What's the name on that one?]

"Marius Kimaris."

[Divine Conduit (Anathema): ? activates, casting Curse of Vitruvius on Marius Kimaris.

For the next 13 months, anything Marius touches will be transmuted into lead.]

"Yikes," Emma winced. "Wouldn't it be kinder just to kill him?"

[Oh, he'll live; a half demon can subsist purely on magic instead of eating or drinking. He's a bit of a glutton though, so it'll be torturous for him all the same; either he suffers the full duration, or he spends a considerable amount of his wealth buying a cure. Patriarch Kimaris won't help him out for free, considering it a fitting punishment for his stupidity. Now, where were we?]

The next hundred messages contained similar invitations to socialise; thankfully without any explicit imagery attached. Edith dictated short refusals to each of them, never more than a sentence and of varying politeness depending on the offer. Finally, there were just 20 messages left, of actual importance.