by Max Jager
"No, this is an elven problem. You humans caused this, we don't want you involved any further." Alicia stated.
"Cora is a very close friend of mine. I can't stand by and do nothing if she's in danger. I only wish I had known of her disappearance earlier." Estellese argued. "You can't stop me from going to find her. This mission to save them will go a thousand times better if you allow us to get our own military involved. Please, this is for the safety of your people, it's in their best interest. And we need to draw a clear line in the sand on where we as humans stand in regards to things like this. If they are going to act out of line, then we must be allowed to put them back in their place, to show the world that this behavior is not acceptable."
Alicia paused for a moment to think about it.
Mendelen looked shocked, she wasn't usually good at speeches so that one came across as completely unexpected.
"Fine, you can help. But this is our war, and we are keeping an eye on you humans." Alicia stated. "We are gathering intel and planning out our strategy, and will inform you when we decide on what day to attack."
"Fine by us. We need some time to prepare anyways." Estellese replied.
"I will inform Kaden and we will likely do our own intel gathering and skirmishes in the meantime." Mendelen replied.
"Whatever you want to do. You're still in hot water until this gets resolved." Alicia stated, pointing directly at Mendelen as she spoke. Once she was done speaking her spirit vanished.
Mendelen turned to Estellese. "I dunno where that came from, but that was a nice save."
"I genuinely care about them, and I really would have gone by myself if she didn't let us join. Cora is a close friend, and I am also friends with Alicia and Lillith." Estellese replied. "It wasn't some prepared speech, I really meant every word I said."
Mendelen nodded. "We need to get to work on a plan then. I will inform Kaden and Zanath."
"And I will work on gathering our attack force." Estellese replied. "You can lead the army, as usual. But I am taking control of a small group to go on my own personal mission."
"Who are you taking?" Mendelen asked.
"I don't know yet. Fate for sure, maybe the twins. We're going straight to free Cora, then we are going to execute Zane. Nothing you say will stop me now, he needs to die, I will not let him get away with this." Estellese insisted.
- Next Chapter: Corruption -
Chapter 30: Corruption
— Immersion Chapter 30: Corruption —
"I sent out the warning to Zane and the Royals last week as requested." Mendelen replied. "A simple warning that we do not approve of their mistreatment of the elves, our allies, and that we will take action if they do not release the elves immediately. They still haven't respond. "And then Kaden made a few big public announcements about it in the global message board, letting everyone know what was going on behind the scenes."
"Good. I sent Fate and the twins down to Port Redwarren." Estellese leaned over the table showing a map of Port Redwarren and the surrounding area, pointing to where she sent them. "Drake was already in the area when I contacted him, he had been following up a request from another Elf, Eladienne I believe, to find a missing elven girl. I instructed him to hang around on the western side of town and to be ready to jump into action when we attack from the west with the elves."
"Wait, I didn't say you could move Drake. I still need to plan out the attack and I need him for that." Mendelen spoke up.
"I'm taking charge of this whole operation, including the attack." Estellese countered.
"The Spartans are my soldiers, I need to lead them for this attack." Mendelen insisted.
"I am taking charge of this entire operation." Estellese firmly stated as she looked straight at him. "I'm not using the Spartans for this battle, I'm taking my friends and Drake, for this battle they aren't Spartans."
Mendelen sighed and conceded for now. "You're sending Drake in alone and you're leaving him inside the city for a few days before we attack. He can't be away from Belesara for that long, he will need to feed. You know he got turned, right?"
Estellese nodded. "I am aware of his vampirism, I'm not concerned if he bites a royal or two. Plus, you and I both know he didn't want to be a Spartan. He only joined us because you offered him a bandaid fix for his vampirism. He will be happier fighting alone, as just Drake instead of as Spartan Drake. He's more powerful then every Spartan we have, even Fate, he will be fine on his own. They aren't emotionless plastic soldiers, you tend to forget that."
"But we can't lose him, if something happens and he dies we just lost our most powerful soldier. When people fight alone their chances of survival dramatically drop." Mendelen argued. "Think about this Estellese, on this battlefield we will have you and our four most powerful Spartans, with no other backup. And judging by how you have this map setup, I'm not anywhere on the battlefield so I assume you want me here on defense. What happens if we lose this battle? If this doesn't go absolutely perfectly we're going to lose one of our top four which will severely set us back. Plus, if we lose the battle and everyone dies, our forces will be devastated. We can't do this, it's far too risky. We need to stay on defense, we can take a small army of ordinary soldiers to just backup the elven attack. We don't need to send a powerful attack force."
"We're not going to just play backup for the elves! This isn't just some token gesture to appease them. We need to help them, it's partially our fault this got so out of hand. I'm bringing in an attack force, and we just won't lose." Estellese argued. "Kaden and his forces will be there, they will likely keep most of the royal army off our backs. Plus we will be fighting alongside the elven forces so we aren't going to be alone and I trust them to have our backs, and Zanath told me about your special armor you had him make for the Spartans. I will personally deliver a set to all Spartans on the battlefield before we attack. Drake will meet up with us once the fight starts, and the five of us together, with your fancy spartan armor, will be more than the Royals can handle. Nevermind whatever forces the elves bring to the battlefield."
"Zanath wasn't supposed to tell anyone about the armor." Mendelen sighed. "I still don't like this idea. We are risking too much."
"You can't always be on defense, sometimes you just need to take a risk and attack." Estellese insisted.
"And now you're sounding like Kaden." Mendelen shook his head. "I'm not going to stop you."
"You couldn't stop me, I wouldn't allow it. Cora is my friend, nobody is going to hold me back." Estellese stood her ground. "And I am nothing like K-" She started to say but she was interrupted by Zanath bursting into the room.
Zanath was carrying a small glass jar, and a can of what looked like bug spray. He paused for a moment and seemed to be looking around the room for something, and when he spotted it he sprinted straight at it. There was a small black widow spider crawling across the ceiling, rushing to try and get into a vent as quickly as possible. It didn't make it to the vent in time before Zanath sprayed it with the bug spray. After a moment it fell from the ceiling and Zanath caught it in his jar.
Zanath took a deep breath, then nodded to himself. He turned and walked back over to the table, standing beside Estellese and Mendelen as he slammed the glass jar on the table, being careful not to break it. Inside the glass jar was 13 dead black widow spiders.
"Um…?" Estellese started as she looked back and forth between Zanath and the jar with a confused expression on her face.
"Sorry, I'm just really pissed off at the moment." Zanath grumbled, then took a deep breath to calm himself down. "You two know how Zane has, somehow, gotten a lot of intel on us? Yes? And how we're all trying to figure out how he's getting it?"
"Yes." Mendelen replied. "I thought there's a traitor among us who's spilling information. Never figured out which Spartan it is though. You got some intel I assume?"
"Yeah." Zanath muttered. "It is the spiders."
"Have you hit your head?" Mendelen asked.
"No, I didn't." Zana
th shot him a glare. "These are Black Widow spiders, they are not native to this area, but they are native to the area around Port Redwarren. They are also solitary creatures, they typically do not travel in groups. Yet we have an infestation of them, an infestation that appeared very shortly after Zane started getting intel on us." He started. "Not only that, but they aren't making any webs, they are just always seen hanging around in the room, as if they are watching us."
"They are always hanging around?" Estellese questioned. "I hadn't really seen that many."
"They are all over the place." Zanath insisted. "They aren't acting very spider-like at all. I caught one to experiment on it and figure out what it is, but before I could do so a large group of them came together to free the captured one. I caught the last few seconds of it when I walked back into my lab, before they all scattered. We know people can have familiars, we've seen other people who can split their senses into animal familiars. I'm certain these spiders are the familiar of a Royal, who is listening, watching, and sending the information to Zane."
"That's… Brilliant Zanath." Estellese replied in shock.
"What do you mean we know of others who can split their senses into a familiar?" Mendelen asked. "I've never even seen someone with a familiar. The only case of split senses I've seen was the twins, Katy and Kathryn. Their signet made them share senses, so they could see, hear, feel, etcetera, everything the other could in addition to their normal senses, at all times."
"Oh, you didn't know about Raven?" Zanath asked.
"Raven? No I don't know a Raven." Mendelen replied.
"Isn't she that sociopath that always hangs around Damion?" Estellese asked, the thought sent a shiver down her spine. "Those two… I can't understand why Kaden keeps them around. She's just as bad as, if not worse then Damion himself, the thought of the two of them together scares me."
"Yeah, that exact woman." Zanath replied. "Her signet ring gave her a familiar, ironically it's a raven, I think that's why she changed her name. But she can see and hear everything the raven can see and hear in addition to her normal senses. Kaden's been using her as a spy for ages, she's one of his main recruiters."
"I never knew that." Mendelen was a little shocked by that news. Apparently Kaden actually could use strategy when he wanted to, he never would've guessed it.
Estellese thought about what he was saying, then activated her signet to switch her primary element to nature. The others curiously turned to her when she did that, and watched as she seemed to focus. "I don't think these spiders are the spies though, if someone has a similar signet then that would imply that nobody else could have a signet skill like that." She stated.
Zanath shook his head. "The raven signet, and the spider one are different enough that they could both exist."
Estellese stared straight at him and nodded. "It's not the spiders, I just checked."
Zanath and Mendelen both caught the nod and the look she had given. Zanath nodded back to confirm that he understood what she meant. "I really must disagree, but if you say so."
"Come with me." Estellese insisted then she left the room. Mendelen and Zanath followed along behind her as she lead the way through the halls of the Spartan Tower. Leading them straight to an empty storage room.
Once they walked in Estellese shut the door, and sealed the door and the vent on the ceiling with barriers. After the room was sealed, her body briefly emitted a green glow, and three dead black widow spiders fell out of their clothes. One fell off of each of them.
"There is an infestation of those spiders in the tower. And you're right, they aren't acting like normal spiders." Estellese stated. "It's safe to talk in here."
"We need to discreetly give this information to Kaden." Mendelen replied. "And this means that they likely know our plans, we need to move Drake and pull back our forces until we plan a new attack. We should reschedule the attack to another day."
"No, we stick with the attack exactly as it is, even if they know it." Estellese stated. "I am going to carve out a big room in the ground underneath the tower, that will become our secret meeting place. There will be no entrance, so the only way in is with teleportation, that way nobody else can find it. I'll invite Kaden there after it's built and I'll explain everything." She explained.
"But we need to pull our forces back." Mendelen insisted.
"No." Estellese stated. "Our Spartans excell at defending a location, at holding their ground. We pretend we don't know about the spiders and don't change our plans. I'm taking charge of Kaden's forces too, he doesn't know it yet but he ain't gonna argue. The royals are going in on this thinking they are ambushing us. So we have our Spartans hold the line, which is what they are good at, and then we have the Moderators ambush the royal army's ambush. Which is what the Moderators are generally good at."
"That would be a brilliant plan, if you weren't counting on the Moderators." Mendelen argued. "You know they are completely unreliable, they are just a rag-tag group of criminals, we can't count on them."
"They follow Kaden's every order to the T. And I can control Kaden, so I can control them." Estellese argued. "And if I somehow can't get Kaden to follow my orders, I have no problem using empathy magic to sway him to my side. Or force if need be."
"I came to talk about more than just the spiders." Zanath butted in, since it seemed like the conversation was going nowhere. "They also have a tech guy. I'm not sure how they did it since my computers aren't hooked up to any sort of network, but this morning I found out that someone had made their own network and forcibly connected all of my computers to another PC somewhere else. They were accessing all of my research, which I believe is how they found out how to access our messages. They must have stolen my hook into the game's interface and improved it." He sighed.
Zanath leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms. "I believe that they have linked themselves with all the electronics here too. I didn't study the connection but I can only assume it was a cross between magic and technology that made the network. A real internet connection shouldn't be possible right now, so it must have an element of magic. When I became aware of their presence on my computer and went to remove them, they bricked all of my computers."
"They did what?" Estellese asked, not at all understanding what he was saying.
"They basically broke my computers, in an unfixable way." Zanath grumbled. "Probably trying to set my research back."
"Oh." Estellese murmured. "So that's why you were so mad earlier."
"Yeah." Zanath muttered. "I had everything backed up though, so I just need a new system. The important part is that they no doubt are in the computers here too."
"So they can blackout the tower at any time." Mendelen thought out loud. "Can you block them out?"
"Yep, going to work on that as soon as we are done talking." Zanath replied. "Since the network appears to be at least partially magical I will need you to use a few anti-magic undershields around the tower to sever the connection while I work on it."
"Can't we just change the anti-magic barrier over the city to block all magic?" Estellese asked.
"No, once the spell is set on those magic gemstones it can't be changed." Mendelen replied.
"Oh, you used a gemstone for that." Estellese mused. "I thought it was the machine in the basement."
Mendelen shook his head. "No, that's the power for the city. Zanath, I would like to start working on the computers immediately. Estellese, you should follow us and ensure that the spiders are kept out of the room."
"Will do." Estellese replied.
Mendelen let out a defeated sigh. "Well, one thing for sure, when it comes to espionage Zane is pretty good. We really need to be careful with this, this guy isn't like Kaden, he's serious about stopping us. Let's get to work."
The three of them secretly got to work. Estellese cleared the communications room of spiders and sealed off the room again. Mendelen quickly created anti-magic under shields under the computers to sever the magic connection to the
other computers, and Zanath got to work.
It took four hours, but Zanath was finally done. "That should do it." He said and stepped away from the computer. "It won't keep him out forever, just for a little. But it will hold them out of your systems until I can get a more permanent solution. I also made a backup of your systems, incase they do get back in and break things it shouldn't break everything and it can be fixed pretty quickly."
As he spoke a portal opened into the room and Kaden stuck his head through. "Yo! Guys! You should see this!" He interrupted.
"What is it?" Estellese asked.
"Zane is sending out a damage control message after I announced on the world forum that he has elven slaves. He's pushing it through all stations on the televisions they have here." Kaden replied.
"What do you mean here?" Mendelen walked over to the portal and stuck his head through it. It appeared to lead to the living room of a house. "Where are you?"