Immersion World

by Max Jager

  Fate and the twins were fuming. "WE won the battle of Bele village. WE kicked your asses when you morons tried to take over every human city." Fate shouted at them.

  "WE let you win." Vincent countered.

  "Bullshit!" Kathryn shouted back. "You guys couldn't have held the cities, you were spread too thin to fight back! We won, you didn't let us win!"

  Vincent just laughed. "That was all part of the plan hon, we never intended to control the cities for long. That boring shit is your job, it's all the Spartans are really good for after all. You guys are like the fuzzy, cutesy mascots everyone sees, while we do all the actual work in the background."

  "Guys." George joined the conversation. "We are better than them, are we not? Vincent? Damion? So let's stop acting like children, it just makes you look as weak as they are."

  "Yeah yeah. Not like we wanted to babysit these goodie-two-shoes. Can't blame me for trying to get some fun out of a BS mission." Vincent muttered then went back to the Moderator only channel.

  "I still consider you a friend Fate. Keep that in mind." George replied before he also moved over to the Moderators channel.

  "Not after you killed Sarah." Fate coldly snapped back, then her and Kathryn returned to the Spartan only channel.

  Estellese, trying to keep her cool, said nothing and just returned to the Spartan channel. "Lets go." She said to her own group as she and the other women started making their way towards the castle, where the Royal army was based. The Royals knew she was coming, they knew her and her team would be attacking the castle from this entrance… But things were eerily quiet. The guards were gone. "We are walking into a trap." Estellese warned.

  "Heads up." Kaden spoke through everyone's earpieces. "The Royals have moved the bulk of their forces out into the field to engage the elves." He warned, then laughed a little. "Which was a terrible idea, the elves are much better off fighting in the field. But that's your stupid Royal battle update. Now we switch to Jerry with the weather."

  "It's a sunny day outside, with a slight chance of clouds and possibly some rain later tonight." A female voice Estellese didn't recognize spoke to everyone.

  "Who is this? One of your people Kaden?" Estellese asked.

  "Not one of mine." Kaden laughed. "But that was a pretty good introduction."

  There was a brief moment of static, before the earpieces started working normally again. "Sorry." Zanath joined the conversation. "One of the Royals is trying to gain access. I shut them out."

  "Got it. Thanks for the update then you two." Estellese replied, then turned to her group. "We stick to the plan, it's clearly a trap but we can handle it." She quickly put a barrier around everyone in her group, with the barrier provided by the new Spartan armor they now had two magic barriers.

  They cautiously walked into the first room, which was a big, dark, grand entrance type of room. A staircase was in the center-back of the room that split into two upward staircases going right and left. There was a door on either side of the staircase, above and below it, with two other doors to the sides of the entrance. The castle was covered with expensive looking paintings and lights, even the railings for the stairs and the carpet were fancy. Zane had spared no expense when building this.

  The four women walked into the room. "Where do we go from here?" Kathryn asked.

  "Left, that leads to the dungeons." Estellese replied, silently waiting for the trap to be sprung. But nothing was happening. As they turned and started walking towards the left-most door a strange woman walked out of the shadows and blocked the door. Fate immediately summoned her hand of five cards, Katy and Kathryn both grabbed their rifles, and Estellese summoned her diamond staff.

  "You're not going this way." The woman stated. She was incredibly short, standing at only 4' tall. Her skin was an inhuman shade of white, with long pure-white hair, black eyes, and a long black and white dress.

  Without a second thought, Kathryn shot the woman four times in the head. But the bullets passed right through her, there was no blood, and she was completely unscratched.

  The woman laughed. "Did you think Sasumi was the only immortal Zane had on his side? He's not. There's a lot of us here."

  "Uh." Kaden spoke up over the earpieces. "I do not know who that woman is. Never seen her before."

  As soon as he finished speaking two exact clones of the woman stepped out of the shadows in the room. They were surrounding the group on three sides, the only side they didn't cover was the entrance.

  "It's four of us against three of them." Estellese quietly murmured. "I'm sure there's a way to take them down, we need to hold our ground until we figure it out."

  "Got it." Fate stated.

  "Good, let me face them alone until I figure it out. Back me up, but don't get too involved in the fight. We want to-" Estellese started to say, but then suddenly a massive metal mace came slamming down from above. The mace struck Estellese with such force that it shattered both of her barriers, and slammed her through the stone castle floor. The mace along with the massive metal man, holding it fell right through the hole in the floor after her. There was a series of loud, ground-shaking crashes that followed.

  Fate and the others were shocked and frozen in place for a moment. Fate quickly ran over to the hole and looked down to see what happened. The metal man hadn't just slammed Estellese through the floor, it slammed her through three floors. The gaping hole in the ground was so deep, the metal man was now standing four floors below them and Estellese was out of sight. Presumably underneath him.

  "Oh my god, is she okay?" Katy worriedly asked.

  "I don't know." Fate took a step away from the hole in the ground, they couldn't jump down there to assist, it was too far of a fall. The air was suddenly a lot heavier and the three women were now on-edge. Katy, the slightly smaller of the purple haired twins, was starting to panic. She was holding it together for now but she was starting to shake. Fate and Kathryn were both scared and tense, but were alright for now.

  "Estellese just took a heavy hit." Fate worriedly spoke in the channel for everyone. "It's bad, it went right through the barriers and she was separated from the group. I don't think she could've survived that. What do we do?"

  "Well." George replied. "You're the leader now Fate. Complete the mission."

  "Kaden! Status!" Mendelen called out through the earpiece. But Kaden didn't answer. "Kaden! Estelle! One of you two answer!" But there was no response.

  "George! We might have just lost Estell! That's not something that can be resolved by just taking leadership. We can't win this without her." Fate argued. "Get Kaden to answer, we need him to go see if she survived."

  "We are unsure of Kaden's status ourselves." George answered. "Which is why I'm stepping up as the new leader. He ran into Matthew, and apparently Matthew has a new weapon. He stunned Kaden, and next thing we knew there was a tank on top of us. Yeah, a literal freaking tank. It was a carefully planned assassination attempt, as soon as he got stunned the tank appeared and blasted him. We don't know what happened after that."

  "We need to pull back." Fate nervously took a step towards the door.

  "No. Our leaders are bound to fall in battle eventually, we need to be ready to step up when they do. We have a mission to complete, with or without them. Get to it." George insisted.

  "But without the Alphas, especially Kaden, this plan isn't going to work-" Fate started.

  "No buts. The elves need us. We'll need to find a new plan. They might still be alright, they are the Alphas after all. I would hope Estellese wouldn't be taken down that easily, I know Kaden won't be." George insisted.

  "You're right." Fate sighed. She switched over to the Spartan channel. "Alright, I'm taking charge until Estellese returns. Drake, we need you to get to us immediately. We need reinforcements."

  "On it." Drake replied.

  "And the three of us need to take her out." Fate said to the others.

  "Why's she sitting there letting us talk?" Katy pointed out. It was at that momen
t that all three of them felt a light prick on the back of their necks. Like a bug bite.

  Fate immediately pulled her long hair aside and slapped whatever was on the back of her neck. When she looked at her hand afterwards she saw what had bitten her. She had a crushed, black spider that was over an inch long in the palm of her hand, and the spider had a red hourglass on its abdomen. "Black widows? Shit! They poisoned us! End this quickly!" Fate called out to the others.

  "Got it." The twins immediately opened fire on one of the women, firing several shots from their rifles at her. But the bullets just went right through her, she was unfazed by the attacks. "We can't hurt her."

  "Follow the old plan then, hang back. Let me figure it out." Fate ordered. She immediately rushed at the first woman, who couldn't move fast enough to maintain the distance. Once she had closed the distance Fate attempted to grab her, but Fate's hand went right through her body. The woman had a physical body, Fate could feel her hand touch something, she was not intangible. And then Fate realized what she was touching and she went pale. The illusion faded and the woman's body broke apart into a pile of thousands of black widow spiders, a pile Fate had stuck her hand into. Hundreds of spiders began rushing out of the pile and down Fate's arm. Her arm was covered in so many spiders it looked like one big black mass moving up her arm. Fate screamed and jumped backwards. She started madly flailing her arm, trying to shake the spiders off.

  "What's wrong?!" Kathryn worriedly rushed over to Fate.

  "She's not a woman! She's not a woman!" Fate panickedly shouted as she frantically tried to shake the spiders off her arm. The spiders just kept crawling up her arm, and several of them repeatedly bit her. "She's spiders!"

  The pile of spiders regrouped into a big pile again and the illusion of a woman re-appeared over them. "I am Arachnia, human, just because I am a hivemind of spiders does not mean you get to disrespect me. Not in my home."

  Fate had gotten all of the spiders she could see and feel off of herself, but she was shaking and she took a few steps away from the woman. The poison was starting to set in, the three of them were starting to cough and were struggling to breathe.

  "Relax, we got this." Kathryn assured Fate and pulled her back a few steps.

  "She is spiders! Shooting her is only going to kill a couple of the spiders, there's thousands of them." Fate shakily argued.

  "We know, we got a plan." Kathryn assured her. As she spoke Katy took a smoke grenade off her belt and tossed it into the middle of the room. The room quickly filled with smoke, obscuring everything from sight.

  Arachnia and her two clones started to back away from the smoke. They listened for the footsteps of the twins and began shooting sticky webs at the two of them. Although, her aim was not good enough to hit the twins. It was clear Arachnia hadn't been in combat before. She quickly stepped out of the smoke cloud, but she couldn't see where the two girls were within the cloud.

  Then, one of Arachnia's spiders caught sight of Kathryn, hanging from the ceiling with a grappling hook. She was about to throw a web at Kathryn, when suddenly a molotov came flying out of the smoke cloud. The molotov hit one of Arachnia's clones and exploded into flames, burning all of the spiders that made up her body. The clone let out a scream of pain, and then disappeared in the flames. Leaving just a scattered pile of burnt spiders behind on the ground.

  The two copies of her that were still standing quickly turned their attention back to the smoke cloud, but they couldn't see where Katy was within the smoke. Before they could do anything another molotov came flying out and burnt the second clone to death. The third and final Arachnia started to back away, she quickly took cover behind a wall where they couldn't reach her. However the last molotov was thrown by Kathryn and came down on her from above.

  With the last clone of the woman defeated, Kathryn dropped down from the ceiling. She was choking and struggling to breathe. As soon as Katy stepped out of the smoke Kathryn stumbled over to her. Katy was resisting the poison a little better.

  "It's alright, I got an antidote." Katy worriedly said as she quickly began going through her bag, putting aside her painting supplies, her headphones, and a sketchbook with sketching supplies. The girl with short chin-length purple hair finally found her antidote, but before she could hand it to Kathryn someone shot a web at it and knocked it right out of her hand. The antidote struck the wall and shattered, causing Katy to freeze in panic.

  Katy looked up to see a fourth Arachnia standing not far from them, and she looked furious. This one was taller than the rest, standing at 6' tall. "I told you all, I am immortal!"

  As soon as she spoke a fireball came blasting into the room through the smoke and just barely missed striking Arachnia. Arachnia quickly took a few steps backwards and fired a web back into the smoke, but it hit nothing.

  A moment later a tall woman standing just an inch shorter than Arachnia, with short blonde hair and blue eyes burst out of the smoke. She wore a blue hoodie with jeans and as soon as she saw Arachnia she threw another fireball at her. Chloe grabbed the two small axes on her back and charged head-on at Arachnia.

  "Stay away from her Miss!" Katy coughed out "She's just a big pile of spiders! Burn her but don't touch her!"

  Hearing the warning Chloe quickly stopped her charge and backed off, blasting a wave of flames back at Arachnia instead. A few arrows were fired out of the smoke, going right through Arachnia when they hit her.

  As Chloe went toe-to-toe with Arachnia two teenage boys and one older woman rushed out of the smoke. The first boy was in his late teens and stood at 5'8" with black hair and sharp brown eyes. He looked a little undernourished, and just wore a simple black shirt and pants. The second boy looked to be in his early teens and was relatively short. He wore a black hoodie with a gaming logo on it with jeans and a cap displaying a few characters from his favorite game. The woman who ran out of the smoke a moment after them stood at 5'4" with sharp blue eyes and long brown hair that reached her mid back. She wore a heavy-looking set of armor while carrying a mace and a shield. Oddly enough she had not one but two pairs of headphones around her neck.

  The older of the boys grabbed Kathryn, while the younger boy and the woman grabbed Katy. They quickly pulled Katy and Kathryn into the smoke.

  "What are you guys doing here?" Fate coughed.

  "Not losing anybody else." Elliott replied. "You need the assistance. Jess, Snipes, get the antidotes to them, I'll help Chloe deal with the other lady." He quickly grabbed his revolver and was about to walk away when Fate grabbed his arm.

  "Don't. You can't hurt her. She isn't human, she's actually a big pile of spiders." Fate coughed out before letting him go.

  "Eeew." Elliott grimaced.

  "Yeah, I tried to grab her." Fate cringed a little as that memory was brought up. "Physical attacks won't work, only non-physical magic like fire will work."

  Elliott sighed and stopped. "I can't do anything against that."

  "I'll go assist." Snipes offered, "You just need to watch over the two girls."

  "Alright, be careful kid." Elliott replied.

  "I'll go back him up." Jess added as she handed an antidote to Fate then rushed out of the smoke after Snipes.

  Elliott stayed to watch over the twins and Fate, and it wasn't long before the battle outside of the smoke ended. Chloe, Jess, and Snipes returned as the smoke started clearing out of the room. Fate could hear the footsteps of the others who had been hidden in the smoke as they slipped off into nearby rooms to scout ahead.

  "Alright, so with the spider lady taken down, and everyone's poison healed, where do we go from here." Elliott asked as he held a hand out to help Fate up.

  "These people are some old friends of mine." Fate filled Katy and Kathryn in, since they were looking confused. She took Elliott's hand and pulled herself back onto her feet. "This is really dangerous guys, they might have killed two Alphas already. You guys shouldn't be here."

  "We are here to help." Jess insisted. "You and Brooke did a lot for Car
ley and I. Least I can do is return the favor."

  "Fate." Elliott added. "We're all friends, if the shoe was on the other foot you'd be here too. Trust us, we can handle this."

  Fate smiled a little and nodded. "Got it. I hate to split us up, but if you guys are willing to help I have a plan. There's two prison blocks on either side of the castle, they aren't connected to each other. The original plan was to have Kaden use a portal to send us to the east side once we freed the prisoners in the west side. Kaden supposedly took a heavy hit and is now MIA. If you guys can clear the prison on the east side it would save us a lot of time."

  "Alright, you got it." Elliott replied. "See you after the battle then."

  "Good, Katy can you give him your earpiece? You can hear everything through Kathryn's right? Since your senses are linked? So you don't actually need one." Fate asked.