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Author Topic: Serena - a new threat  (Read 984 times)

Offline Sparky

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Serena - a new threat
« on: 08. December 2024, 11:32:09 AM »
If you look back, you'll find my story about the "invasion from the 8th realm", involving Serena, the witch with "the mouth of metal". I wanted (and still do want) to continue that story.

Over 6 months ago now, I started writing some bits. Looking at them now, I'm not 100% sure these chapters actually give me what I want / need for the new story, but thought I'd still publish them, as-is.

Enjoy!

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In the first Serena story:

- Serena is a very capable witch
- Pledges to the "light grey", not to the light (to allow her to do dark magic)
- subject of prophecy (mouth of metal, unite covens, defeat a dark evil, become queen of witches)
- meets 3 others, revealing the 'power of four'

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Serena - a new threat

By Sparky_33, 2024


Chapter 1


"Leave him alone!" said Serena loudly.

"Or what?" was the reply.

"Or I'll just have to stop you!" said Serena. Serena and Harper had been walking together through one of the not-so-nice parts of town: Harper had left a few minutes before, so Serena was now alone... when she had seen one guy, probably in his early 20's, seemingly attacking another guy, of a similar age. The first guy had a small knife in his hands, and he was threatening the other, demanding he pass over his money and phone.

"Yeah, you and whose army?"

"Well, yes, I guess I COULD call up my small army, but why bother when I can just do it myself?"

"I'd like to see you try!" was the response. "And come any closer and I'll use the knife on him...."

Whilst she had been talking, Serena had slipped the ring from her little finger, let it transform into the dark jewellery, and was clipping the rings to her nose and lips. "We ok there, braces?" asked Serena silently.

"We sure are Serena!". If you remember, Serena had a mouthful of magical metal, which protected her from the dark magic she was planning on using. And yes, her 'mouthful of metal' is sentient, just like her wand. (To be honest, she probably didn't really need to use her dark jewellery for what she was about to do, but not only did it make using the magic easier, she has just got in the habit of using it when she needed to do any dark-ish magic).

"Wanda, you ready?"

"Sure am, your maj!" was Wanda's reply.

They both knew that Serena was about to use some dark magic, but they too had seen the situation, and realised that the dark magic would be neither especially dark, nor would it take much effort, so the braces would be able to completely protect Serena from the effects of the magic. Wanda was very proud of her owner: whilst she often used dark magic, never once had she used it for a completely 'bad' purpose. Ok, yes, there was the 'Mandy Miller' episode (but that ultimately had a very good outcome), and then there was the time she had killed her grandfather (which had been very emotional, and Wanda had accepted, like Serena had, that it was very much a 'mercy killing'). It is one thing to have the ability to do something, it is a very different thing to actually use it... or even WANT to use it. Wanda was very aware that Serena could easily just kill this guy if she wanted to: the guy with the knife would be unable to stop her. But that wasn't the sort of person that Serena was. Wanda and the braces were both interested to see what Serena would do this time...

"Knife? What knife?" asked Serena.

The guy with the knife turned slightly towards Serena, waving the knife at her... which was the moment that Serena issued her dark summoning spell. Instantly, the knife was in HER hand. "Ah, yes, THIS knife!". Serena then issued an even stronger dark magic spell, and the blade turned to dust. "Although I don't think it will be much use any more!"

With the guy disarmed, she needed to take a further step to make the guy completely back down. She'd done this sort of thing a couple of times before, and had discovered that absolute humiliation usually worked well. With another dark summoning spell, the guys clothes - all of them - were in Serena's hand. Which meant that he was standing there, completely naked, except for his trainers. Everything had happened to him so quickly, he had absolutely no idea what had actually just happened. A smile crept onto Serena's face. Ok, yes, such humiliation could indeed be considered as 'bad', but the reasons were entirely 'good'!

The guy that he had been attacking started to giggle: he had no idea what had just happened either, but was very happy with the outcome.

Serena looked at the clothes she had in her hand. "Errr... yuk!!" she exclaimed, dropping them whilst at the same time making them turn into shreds of material. "I guess you'd better go off and get some clothes before you either freeze, or get arrested!". And with that, Serena ran her last spell, to teleport herself away from the area.

So, you might be asking yourself 'Why is Serena doing this sort of thing in public?'. The answer to that was simple: Serena, Sarah, Harper and Samantha had been discussing the realities of trying to keep their witching skills - and those of the wider witch population - secret, and decided that maybe it was time for people to - once again after around 500 years - be aware that magic DID actually exist. But whatever they did, it would need to be in as positive a light as possible.

So, Serena had become a bit of a vigilante. I mean, she wasn't actively seeking out things to 'sort out', but when a situation presented itself, she decided that she would take positive action, rather than just walking by, and ignoring it. Tonight had been one of those occasions: she had defused the situation, got rid of the offending weapon, and 'stopped the crime in progress' with very little real effort.

And yes, she had no doubt it would, like previous times, be reported in social media.... but whatever was reported so far had been very positive. Not REALLY sure of what had ACTUALLY happened, but very positive. Serena thought of it as being a 'dipping of her toe in the water', to find out which way public opinion was going.

What Serena was hoping for was a very much more public 'problem' that either she, of all four of them, could fix. It was all about showing witches and their magic in the most positive light possible. In parallel, she needed to do something to engineer how they were perceived by the media, and she had been researching several TV presenters she could 'use to her advantage'.

Once more social media was buzzing as a result of what Serena had done. Whilst the initial report was quite accurate, people questioned what had happened. I mean, how can a knife just get 'taken' like that? And be turned into dust? And as for the clothes.... Several people suggested that someone must have been high on drugs at the time.


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Offline Sparky

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Re: Serena - a new threat
« Reply #1 on: 08. December 2024, 11:37:47 AM »
Chapter 2

It's been a while now since Serena 'defeated' the werewolf invasion from the 8th realm. She has settled into her role as "Queen of the witches", which in reality doesn't give her any great power, but she's a figurehead, and the one who seems to be 'interfacing' with certain governmental departments. Internally, within the witch community, she leads many of the discussions. And her opinions are listened to: even the elders have come to appreciate that Serena's wisdom far exceeds her actual age.

With the many elders help, she had set up a 'National Witches Council', with representatives from around the country. Almost all are coven elders, but Serena is trying hard to encourage a few younger (so under 60!) members too. Being older, much of the daily communications within the council is by email, although there is also an active WhatsApp group too.

Outside of the Council, there was a smaller, obviously witches-only, social media channel. Harper and a couple of other tech-savvy witches ran it, and Serena was VERY active on it: it was a way that she could keep in touch with all the younger witches out there, and, luckily, Serena had a LOT of credibility with them. Generally, they understood about keeping quiet about witchcraft and magic, and more importantly, WHY. But there was also a feeling that the skills of witchcraft should be allowed to become public.

Serena was stuck between a rock and a hard place: on one side she had the Council: traditionalists who felt that witchcraft and the associated magic skills must stay secret... it would be disastrous if the public found out. On the other side were the younger members, who felt that maybe it was time to 'spill the beans'.

Serena understood both sides, and realised that there were several problems about the public finding out. The most obvious would be the 'knee-jerk reactions' of the many: 'why has this been hidden for so long?' and so on. Then there was the inevitability of mis-understanding what the witches were about (if they can do magic, then it must be BAD!). And the sensationalism of it all when the press got hold of it.

So, for the moment, everyone kept quiet about witch's magic. Well, almost. As we saw above, Serena was occasionally 'doing stuff' to see what the public reaction would be. If anyone asked her - elders, council members, other young witches - she would simply apply 'plausible deniability'. 'Who? Me?'. The only ones who knew were Sarah, Harper, Samantha and Serena herself. Plus their four wands, of course. Oh, yeah, her braces too: let's be honest... Wanda and her braces were clearly co-conspirators!!


In parallel with all this, one of the things that had come out of the chatter on the witches' social media was that there were quite a few young witches (let's say under-25's) who had discovered that they were quite good at, and enjoyed, doing magic, but were a bit frustrated at needing to keep it all quiet. Serena had turned this to her advantage, and had got many of them together and not only got to know them better, but had started to positively train them in the use of witchcraft, emphasising that they had all 'pledged to the light', so anything they did should always be for the greater good. They seemed to appreciate what Serena was doing for them, and Serena too was enjoying sharing her knowledge.

"Don't worry, one day soon we'll be able to be a lot more open about who we are, and what we can do... but it needs to be done carefully, so please work with me on this" she had posted on the witches' social media.

Out of the quite large number of able young witches, Serena had identified a handful who seemed to not only be good at magic, they really 'understood it'. So Serena, and her team, had been helping them do some quite advanced magic, and along the way, quite a level of trust had developed between them all. And yesterday, she had taught them their first dark magic spells: the dark magic summoning, a spell that Serena used quite a lot, as it was SO much more effective than the equivalent light-magic spell.

There is, of course, one thing that I've not mentioned at all. It was something that the Council never seemed to want to discuss, instead just 'burying their heads in the sand' and ignoring the whole concept. I'm talking about the concept that the might be some 'dark covens' out there: covens of witches practising dark magic. Even more so than the mainstream witches, they would be very secretive about what they did, no different from so many others in the criminal world. However, Serena had become aware of one or two 'strange happenings', and wondered if they could well be the work of dark witches.

Which is why she was wanting to train up a small team of elite witches who could use dark magic for good. Witches like her. As far as Serena knew, she was - in recent times at least - the only witch who had not 'pledged to the light' on her 18th birthday. But she had a feeling that there must be others who, whilst formally pledging to the light, really should have 'pledged to the light grey'. Like the handful she was starting to train in dark magic.

If there WERE dark covens out there that needed to be 'sorted out', then it would take a lot more than light magic to do so... it would take witches able to do dark magic, but do it for the greater good.

'But what about Sarah, Samantha and Harper?' I hear you ask. Well, Samantha is a powerful healer, and whilst she was more than willing to help 'heal' Serena when she did dark magic, she herself was completely unable to use it. Sarah and Harper were able to do simple dark magic spells, but quickly suffered the after-effects if they tried anything at all powerful - luckily Samantha was able to help them out afterwards. So Serena needed to find others who were able and willing to use dark magic: yes, they wouldn't have the skills of 'the power of four', but if they could manage to use dark magic, they would be a great asset. It goes without saying that this specific training was kept very hush-hush. The 'team of four' knew about it, and so did the small group involved. Beyond that, noone knew. Especially the members of the council!

Before finishing the chapter, it's worth reminding ourselves that there ARE non-witches who are aware of witches: we discovered this fairly early on in Serena's story, when she met her headmistress. And she also indicated that the 'top man' at the police (he's actually called the 'Chief Constable', where 'constable' really means 'policeman', rather than a rank) knows. Plus quite a few top MoD guys too: Serena got to know them in the last story.


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