“Aaaaaaaand that’s a wrap. The final tally is Spider Cult 11 – Exterminators 0. A perfect, complete wipe with no substitutions and minimal damage taken. Nice work, Jacob.”

Vaile patted the nearly seven-foot-tall mutated former teen on his shoulder before stepping back into the ring of bodies. He reached into his item box and pulled out a few potions and then lazily tossed them onto what remained of the Exterminators, with the vials shattering on impact and causing the corpses to shudder and pull themselves back together from the disparate gore that they had become. He signaled to the spiders that they should be prepared and felt a small bit of schadenfreude as the once dead people each took a pained gasp as life flooded back into them, only for a sting from the spiders to cause them to lock up and be helpless as they were wrapped in silk.

He was about to ask the spiders why they were not dragging the wrapped bodies down I not the cave when he remembered that the cave was likely still filled with the killer fog.

“Ah, silly me!” Vaile quipped before bringing up his menu and summoning a lower-ranked wind spirit. With that summoned, he directed the simple-minded entity to draw out all of the hazardous fog from the cave and send it somewhere far away. The spirit obliged, and the spiders had to scurry away from the entrance as a thick miasma was forced out of the former headquarters of the Spider Cult and directed elsewhere.

The spiders then did what Vaile had figured that they would and dragged the wrapped-up foes into the cave, and from what Vaile knew of the nameless, stadium-sized spider’s vindictive streak and anger over the attack, he figured that the fallen would soon enough wish that they had never set foot even remotely close to this place. He decided to follow the spiders down into the underground, mostly because he had let Jacob take over that branch cult and do the dirty work.

He never once had any kind of religious feeling towards the Cult and its so-called Goddess, but he was a damn good thespian and had been more than able to put on a convincing performance. Although, given the fact that when people joined the cult they no longer saw him as hideous, he figured that those who had stayed along for the ride were also fully cognizant that he was not devoted to their ‘Mother’. Still, whether they knew it or not was irrelevant, as he never once got asked to join in on the prayers and sacrifices, nor was he asked as to why all the most faithful had been ‘gifted’ mutations, but he had not.

He stopped in his path about fifty yards in (or its rough metric equivalent), more or less, and decided on a different course of action. He had to go and meet up with High Confessor Gareth and hammer out the details regarding the future of the cult and the nation that it was in. With that in mind, he decided to push his overleveled body to the limit and rocketed out of the cave and towards where Gareth and his branch of the cult was situated like a certain unfortunate Coyote’s favored target. Flying? Who needed flying when you could run fast enough and long enough to put something like a generic passenger jet to shame? Why fly over water when you ran fast enough to stay on top of it by sheer speed alone?

In his eyes, that was a far more impressive feat of power. A shame that Players tended to have their power limited when in danger or under the threat of much more powerful beings. The damnable rules of the game still somewhat applied, but he really, really wanted to be able to just fucking bolt whenever he was threatened by something of a higher level than him.

Well, at least he had the ability to teleport, despite it being rather unreliable in terms of accuracy.

…

She was filled with no small degree of twisted jubilation when her children brought those men and women to her, wrapped up in their bindings and kept in a paralyzed state. She even was willing to let them bear witness to her form, which immediately caused them to try and strain against the venom that coursed through their veins. How could they ever hope to fight something like herself, and how could they ever believe that they had a chance?

The look in their eyes, one of pure horror at the realization that her little cult did speak true. Their ‘Mother’ did exist and was not merely some fictitious being that their leader and his followers claimed to be following the will of for the sake of their own power. The sight of that realization sinking deeper and deeper, the knowledge of what lay beneath their own homeland, and what could, at any moment, rise from the depths and bring ruin to all they held dear…

It was like an ambrosial elixir that was just as sweet if not more so than their fluids would be once they were properly seen to. If her mandibles could twist into a sadistic grin, she would have had one a mile wide. It felt so damn good to see them trying to rationalize everything in front of them. She was half about to use telepathy to fuck with their puny little minds further, but the arrival of a… less than welcome visitor delayed that torture a bit longer.

“Spider! I have come to determine whether you seek to join our endeavors or not! This is the last time that the Alliance will request your entry into the Alliance. You should know what we will do to you if you choose to deny our goal.”

A being of brilliant light that was covered head to toe in gold and ivory armor while bearing wings made of the stuff of the stars manifested before all the assembled beings down in the depths.

“An… angel….” One of the Exterminators groaned out, clearly showing that he could resist the stuff that had been pumped into him a bit more than the others.

“What now, Celestial? Can you not see that I am busy?”

The angel… or rather, the Celestial shot a cursory glance over its shoulder at the webbed-up creatures behind it.

“Irrelevant. Will you join, or will the entire Alliance be forced to eliminate you and yours? If you are not with us, then you are against us. Do not force me to remind you of what happened to the Blight Gnomes when they refused to join.”

“I am aware of their fate.” The titanic spider hissed. “And for your information, I will be joining, but not as a mere lower member.”

The Celestial’s voice did not shift in pitch as it replied, stating that “You need to bear a Name, one either bestowed upon you by Vaile or inherited from a predecessor to have that privilege.”

The colossal arachnid chittered its form of laughter in a perfectly audible manner.

“What is so funny, nameless one?”

Like before, the spider strained against its limited facial features to sneer at something before it, this time being the Celestial.

“Once I complete my takeover of this nation, Vaile will personally grant me a Name!”

This caught the attention of the Celestial. If the spider was not lying, then it meant that Vaile was here. Or at least he was close, relatively speaking.

“If you are lying, then you know the consequences.”

The spider lifted one of its limbs and slammed it down I front of the Celestial, barely missing the Heavenly being by just a few millimeters.

“I do not lie, stardust bitch! Do not accuse me of something so heinous unless you desire that I send your essence flying back to the place that your kind resides in to reform over the course of a few decades!”

The Celestial knew that this nameless creature was telling the truth. After all, the last time it had come here to demand that the spider join up the creature had been far more pathetic, obviously fearing for its life. Now, however? It was, in its eyes, so very close to gaining what so many dreamed of having, and it was full of courage due to this. It would no longer cower out of fear of reprisal as a lower member of the Alliance would, and once it got a Name, it would be a part of the higher echelons immediately, despite only joining so recently.

“Then, you must swear not to harm him. Even with a Name, you would not stand against a combined assault by-“

“I KNOW! NOW FUCK OFF SO I CAN DEAL WITH THESE SHITSTAINS, YOU STARDUST BITCH! I’VE SAID I WILL JOIN, NO GO AWAY UNTIL MY TAKEOVER IS COMPLETE!”

The nameless spider raised its limb again and readied it. It then brought it down with the full intent to smash the Celestial to fragments, but the Celestial had already booked it back to High Heavens just moments before the tip of the leg was about to impact its ‘head’.

The nameless spider took some deep breaths and tried to let its anger fade away, only to refocus its eyes and discover that all nine bastards had not only regained the use of their bodies but had also cut themselves free and escaped to parts unknown.

This, in her eyes, was very no Bueno, and only brought her indignant rage back to the surface until it boiled over, and she screeched as loud as she could, sending pressure waves down the cave network with enough force to instantly pop the eardrums of a human, even if they were wearing protection, at over a half mile away. The shockwave knocked her little babies unconscious for a while, and once they regained their senses, she screamed at them (telepathically this time) to find and recapture the escapees.

She was so close, but if she let this all slip away, there would likely never be a second chance. She could not allow this to all fall apart!