Immersion World

by Max Jager

  Oliver quickly rushed over to where she had landed. He cautiously approached her, knowing she had a lot of magical potential. She was probably still dangerous. But after a moment he realized that she was too badly hurt to get back up. He could tell she wasn't one of the fairies meant to be fighters, but it just puzzled him. Why was she here if she wasn't a fighter?

  Pex could no longer control her signet, so Oliver slowly returned to his normal size. He looked down at the small fairy on the ground. He lifted a foot to step on her and end it, but hesitated. After a moment's hesitation he instead picked her up and placed the fairy on a broken part of the wall that was off the ground where she wouldn't be accidentally stepped on. Then he rushed to assist his sister.

  Danielle rushed in from the side, quickly jumping over a vine that attempted to sweep her feet as she ran straight for Cora. Her lack of a ranged attack was a severe handicap against a nature mage. As she moved in on Cora a massive, spiked wooden wall sprang up in front of her, blocking her path. Danielle quickly jumped backwards to stop her momentum but as she jumped a few smaller spikes all fired out of the wall and she was stabbed multiple times by them. They were small spikes though, they left a lot of injuries but didn't leave any major wounds. She quickly regained her bearings and rushed around the wall after Cora but before she could reach the woman Cora summoned a cloud of poison in the gap next to the wall.

  Thinking fast Danielle held her breath as she ran through the cloud and immediately took a slash at Cora. Cora jumped backwards and wings grew out of her back, allowing her to take flight and hover above Danielle. She quickly whipped another vine down at the woman, forcing Danielle to back off to evade the attack.

  Then the cocoon started to open and everyone paused for a moment. Cora was waiting for Emmei to come out and take the two scythe siblings out, she knew it was going to fully heal him and make him much stronger then he was. The two siblings were unsure of what was going on. The cocoon opened, and Emmei's corpse fell out of it. The body was fully healed, and transformed to be stronger, but he had already been dead when she used it, it could not bring the dead back. Cora was horrified, and she turned back to Danielle with a look of pure disgust and malice.

  Seeing that the cocoon was not a threat, Danielle adjusted her grip on her scythe and started moving towards Cora, trying to get underneath her to attack from below with the last shot her shotgun had in it. But suddenly Cora let out a shriek of pain, and for seemingly no reason a deep slash carved itself across her back. Once the slash appeared, Cora gained a blood-red aura. Blood magic. Blood magic came in every element, it was incredibly powerful magic that severely injured the user with every spell cast. Causing injuries to the caster that were near permanent, they were impossible to heal by any means other then waiting for them to naturally heal. Blood magic was known, and shamed, for being suicidal magic for a reason.

  "Watch out!" Danielle called out to her brother as the two of them quickly started to back off. But before she could do anything Danielle felt some invisible force grip her leg, followed by what felt like something with incredibly sharp claws tearing its way up her leg. Cora made the same clawing upwards motion from a distance. Danielle collapsed to the ground with four deep claw-marks running from her right ankle all the way up to her right thigh, she could no longer move her leg and she was losing blood incredibly fast. She started trying to get up to limp away, but then Cora let out another shriek of pain and Danielle felt the same thing happen to her other leg.

  Danielle collapsed again, looking up to see Cora hovering directly over her now with one slash across her back and one across her stomach. The expression on her face was on of pure malice and hatred. Danielle was unable to move but she quickly grabbed for her scythe to try and take a shot at Cora. But Cora summoned a vine to yank the scythe from her hands.

  "Danielle!" Oliver shouted as he tried to rush over to her, but before he could get there multiple vines grabbed Daniell. One grabbing each of her arms and legs, they lifted her off the ground, painfully pulling and twisting her limbs as they pulled her out of Oliver's reach. Oliver quickly took aim at Cora and fired his last four bullets up at her, hitting her with three of them. Twice in the chest and once in the arm. But it didn't matter, Cora didn't drop Danielle and instead slammed her into into the stone floor three times before she slammed Danielle into the wooden spiked wall. Killing her instantly.

  Then she turned on Oliver and was about to use the same strategy on him when Pex came flying after her. Pex had partially healed her own injuries, just enough to fly again. "Cora! We need to go! Leave him be! He's not a bad person, he didn't hurt Emmei, and he spared me."

  Cora shot her a glare, but then looked back at Estellese and Kaden and realized that this battle had been all but lost.

  "Pin it down." Cora ordered. "Can't have it following us, I won't kill it."

  Pex uneasily nodded and sent a powerful, but constant gust of wind to pin Oliver to the wall. Oliver, for the moment, was frozen in shock after seeing his sister die. He was too emotionally broken to offer any further resistance. He was instead starting to cry. He dropped his scythe and was pushed back against the wall, and Cora quickly built wooden walls around him to ensure that he stayed put.

  Cora took a moment to heal the gunshot wounds she had taken just enough to prevent her from bleeding out and to help her breathe normally again. Then she landed on the ground and got rid of her wings. She started stumbling over to Estellese when she saw Sasumi moving in for the finishing blow.

  Cora quickly grabbed Sasumi's mace with a few of her vines to restrain him again, like she had been doing before, while Pex threw a barrier over Estellese to keep her safe from the smaller spikes. Estellese was quick to remove the last two spikes from her feet, but she could no longer stand with her injuries. Instead she unfolded her wings and took flight. She was much less agile and fast when in the air, unlike the fairies she wasn't built for flying.

  "We need to get out of here Estell." Kaden murmured near incoherently through the comms.

  "Zanath got in! We have a general map. There should be a room to the north of you guys. Just bust the wall down." Mendelen called through the comms. "Forget Sasumi, just get the prisoners and run. He's not that fast."

  "North?" Kaden murmured. "What are the coordinates?"

  Mendelen quickly read off the coordinates in a confused tone.

  "We need to go to that room, it's important. I wanted to get it before we left." Kaden mumbled. "I can't move though."

  Sasumi's mace shattered into little pieces to escape the vines and the pieces fired themselves up at Estellese. But Pex was quick to make another barrier to protect her.

  "Yeah, there's the problem with that. How do we get Sasumi off our backs?" Estellese questioned. She quickly summoned a massive boulder and attempted to use it to push Sasumi away, but he just broke his body apart to slip around the boulder and rebuilt himself nearby. Pex attempted to throw him backwards with a powerful gust of wind, but he was too heavy to budge. And Cora couldn't move him with her vines either.

  Frustrated with how difficult it was to hit Estellese Sasumi turned around and took a swing at Cora instead. But Pex quickly used a gust of wind to move Cora backwards, then flew after her to sit on her shoulder.

  Then a shadow came darting across the floor, straight at Sasumi. Suddenly the two elven sisters sprang out of the shadow and Eladienne punched Sasumi hard in the back with both her signet and the gauntlet's enchantment activated. The two of them had left for just long enough to heal their wounds before returning to assist.

  The blow, once again, sent Sasumi flying to the other side of the massive room, skidding across all of the rubble on the floor. He slammed into the back wall and by the time he hit the ground the suit of armor was a mangled mess of metal. The two looked around at the bloody battlefield and cringed. "Shit, we were too late." Eladienne growled.

  "I'm so sorry! I'm not too good of a healer yet, it takes a while to fix those wounds." Lynn quietly murmured. When she
spotted Fate and Emmei she lowered her head and looked very upset. Looking like she blamed herself for their deaths.

  "We need to retreat before he gets back to us! Let's move." Estellese breathlessly called out. "Pex I need your help with Kaden. And you two, please help Kathryn." She ordered.

  Lynn and Eladienne rushed over to Kathryn. Lynn got there first and quietly offered the younger girl a shoulder to lean on. Eladienne, on the other hand, just picked Kathryn up without saying a word and began running over to Estellese with her.

  Pex rushed over to Kaden and shrunk him down to fairy size, allowing Estellese to easily pick him up in the palm of her hand. They then took down the stone hut the prisoners had been hiding in.

  "We need to run! Lets go!" Estellese called out as she flew towards the north wall, with Pex sitting beside Kaden in her palm and everyone else running behind her. Once they reached the wall Estellese used her earth magic to break the stone wall apart so everyone could rush to the room on the other side of it, then she quickly repaired the wall before Sasumi could return. Cora helped repair it by adding another wooden wall right behind it, and Pex put a barrier in front of both walls.

  Estellese flew down the hall, leading everyone behind her. It wasn't long before they heard Sasumi smashing down the wall behind them. He was right on their heels. As they all rushed into the next room they were met with three different directions to go in.

  "Which way Mendelen?" Estellese asked.

  "Right." Mendelen answered.

  "Down." Kaden answered.

  "What?" Both Estellese and Mendelen asked.

  "Kaden there is no down." Mendelen stated.

  "Trust me, go through the floor." Kaden insisted. "It's a long way down, I don't think there's any rooms between us and the room below, but it's down there. We HAVE to go down there. It's important."

  While everyone talked Cora and Pex blocked the doorway with a wooden wall and a barrier again.

  Estellese hesitated, then sighed. "Down it is then." She couldn't believe she was going along with what Kaden said, but for once he actually seemed serious. She could feel nothing but dirt beneath them with her earth magic, so she just took control of the stone floor and began lowering it under the ground with everyone on it. She was taking all of the dirt below them and packing it above their heads while moving the stone floor down, quickly lowering everyone as if they were on an elevator.

  "How far down is this?" Estellese asked.

  "Deep. Six floors maybe?" Kaden replied.

  By the time Sasumi broke into the room they had been in, it was filled with dirt. They went down about six floors worth before they struck a strange, empty room. Estellese slowly lowered everyone into the room, which had an eerie green glow in it. Once they were all in the room it was pretty clear that this used to be a laboratory, one that used to be connected to the castle but seemed to have been since abandoned.

  The source of the green light was a weird part of the wall in this laboratory. A large section of the wall was just, missing. Where the wall and floor should have been was nothing more than a giant hole, a hole that looked bottomless and to top it all off there were green ones and zeros flying past within the hole.

  "Well that's new." Kaden murmured as he looked at the hole in the wall.

  The elves were all thoroughly confused as to what this weird hole was, but it didn't mean much of anything to them.

  "That's… Unsettling." Estellese murmured as she looked at the odd green hole.

  "Next room. Bust through that wall!" Kaden ordered. Estellese broke down the wall infront of them and it lead into a massive underground arsenal. It was a huge room filled with what must have been a hundred tanks along with many crates of guns, the room had a big elevator in the back to lift all the tanks out of storage. "That's what I was looking for, I was a little off."

  "That's… a lot of firepower." Estellese murmured.

  "Yep. Which is why we should get rid of this." Kaden replied. He focused and opened a massive portal on one side of the room, and he seemed to be straining himself to open one that big and keep it open. "Don't go through this one! Throw all the tanks in it. It leads to the volcano."

  "Shouldn't we keep the tanks?" Estellese questioned.

  "We don't have any space for that." Mendelen replied. "We could keep one or two."

  "That volcano isn't anywhere near us, right?" Zanath asked.

  "Nope." Kaden replied. "Active volcano on a different island."

  Estellese nodded, then focused and began rapidly throwing all of the tanks through the portal with her metal magic. Making each one levitate and flinging them through the portal. It was exhausting moving all of them like this, but she eventually threw all but two into the portal. "I'm keeping two of these." She stated.

  Then Kaden closed and reopened the portal. "Now the guns, and your two tanks. This one goes to Storage in the Spartan tower." He said, and Estellese threw the guns and the tanks into the portal.

  Once the room was clear Kaden let out a sigh of relief and closed the portal. Then he reopened a normal sized one beside them. "Who is that portal for?" She asked.

  "Elves first." Kaden replied.

  Estellese nodded and stepped back as the prisoners slipped through the portal. Most of them thanked everyone that was here for saving them.

  "Mendelen, how did the battle on the surface go?" Estellese asked.

  "It was more or less a draw.." Mendelen replied. "The elves technically won by reaching the city and dealing considerable damage, but not without taking heavy losses. Alicia and Adamus are fine. Ultimately they retreated when they got word that we saved the prisoners.

  Cora was the only elf who didn't leave through the portal. "I'm… Not ready to go back. Not without him." She murmured. "I… I do not feel well. Can I stay with you for a while?" She turned to Estellese.

  "Of course." Estellese replied. "I'm sorry." She murmured before giving Cora a brief hug.

  "Sorry, we were late." Lynn quietly added.

  "It's not your fault hon. Please tell Alicia where I am, and fill in for me at the medical center. Follow Lillith's lead until I return" Cora asked. "I just… Need time away. I can't handle it right now."

  "Alright." Lynn replied. "And thanks for saving me." She added to everyone else before she slipped through the portal.

  Eladienne put Kathryn down and gave Cora an apologetic look, but was unsure what to say. She then followed her sister through the portal.

  "Where did you send the group of betas we replaced Kaden?" Estellese asked.

  "Spartan tower medical ward." Kaidn replied.

  "So they are probably still in Belesara waiting for us to return. I need to go break the news to them about Fate." Estellese quietly mumbled.

  "Good luck." Kaden replied and closed the elven portal. Then he opened another portal to the Spartan tower medical ward.

  "Want me to come help?" Pex offered.

  "No, stay with Cora. She needs the support." Estellese quietly replied.

  "So do you." Pex pointed out.

  "She needs it more right now." Estellese replied.

  Kathryn kept her head down and silently hobbled through the portal, struggling to stand with her injuries. She was trying to hide it but her face was soaked with tears and she had emotionally gone numb. She expected to wake up from this nightmare at any moment.

  Everyone else followed her through the portal. The moment Estellese stepped out of the portal she was met with a big, yet brief, hug from Mendelen and a pat on the back from Zanath who were waiting for them.

  "You two had us both so worried." Mendelen shakily replied. "Are you okay?"

  "I will be okay. I just need time to process everything and recover." Estellese quietly answered.

  "Where's my hug?" Kaden questioned.

  "When you're healed and not tiny I will hug you too Kaden." Mendelen replied. "You nearly died on us. You really scared us all."

  "Just like the old days." Kaden grinned, trying to inject humor into the situat
ion.

  "Yeah." Mendelen nodded. "Let's get everyone medical attention and rest." He said, then turned to Cora. "And I'm sorry for your loss, both of you." He added with a glance towards Kathryn. "If there's anything I can do, let me know."

  "Estellese has it covered. Thanks though." Cora quietly murmured as they all walked into the medical ward. Cathrine, Freesia, and several other doctors were already waiting on them, although Cathrine's expression turned from a celebratory one to a look of devastation when she realized her friends Fate and Katy were not there. "No…" She quietly murmured. She took Freesia's hand and lowered her head. But she held the feeling in and immediately got to work with the other doctors and healers, treating everyone as quickly as they could.

  Part II: Beta Tests

  Chapter 1: Rough Beginnings