Dissonance

by K. T. Hanna

  His question was innocent enough, but not combined with his recent behavior. Laria took a slow breath and disengaged her workstation, looking up at James.

  “Lots of ideas, as I’m sure all of you have too.” She couldn’t bring herself to completely give away the fact that they knew he was spying for someone. But then he probably knew they knew, or something equally as confusing. “We’re trying to narrow things down, but right now it simply appears like a portion of the server overloaded. It’s going to be fine. Glitches were bound to pop up with a system as advanced as this one.”

  She wished her voice sounded as convicted as she tried to project, but he just nodded. “Of course, it will be. The headsets are going strong and performing miraculously.”

  Laria smiled, but her stomach clenched with a cold twist. It was odd phrasing to say that the headsets were going strong and not the game. This was, after all, the gaming division. While the headgear was definitely important to the overall success of the game, it was the game itself that was their livelihood.

  Except the contract that got them the heavy investment, the time to develop the game properly, well that came from the headgear didn’t it. And she knew the military had a hand in it. Was he that stupid? Did he mean to give himself away, without a shadow of a doubt left in her mind?

  He locked eyes with her and smiled, and she knew right then that James didn’t care if they knew, not anymore. He would snoop and figure out just what went wrong, and he’d do it without actually ever being caught doing anything wrong.

  She gulped down her irritation and forced a smile. If he wanted to try her, she’d play too. “Well, the headsets are a huge part of it, but I feel like the gamers are too. It’s probably helped by brains that are already good at doing this stuff.”

  He studied her for a few moments, and smiled, this time seeming more genuine. “True. Gamers are a special breed. I think that’s part of the success too. So glad to be a part of this team. Thanks, Laria.”

  With that he walked out, closing her office door behind him. She watched as his shadow receded and suddenly didn’t feel quite safe. When she was certain he was gone, she engaged a call to Shayla.

  “Hey, you got a second?”

  Shayla responded after an initial pause. “Yeah, sure. What’s up?”

  “Nothing.” Laria breathed out the word and hoped against hope that Shayla would remember their college code, way before she’d met her husband or they’d worked together, they’d been very good friends. “We should so have dinner tonight. Just us two, outside of work for once.”

  She’d adapted it a bit, because they weren’t going to a bar, and they weren’t at a party, they were at a workplace that left her feeling unsafe.

  After a slight hesitation while the cogs probably turned over in Shayla’s head, Laria was relieved to hear her response. “Great idea. I’ll see you after work then.”

  “Fantastic.” She kept the levity in her voice, not trusting their internal calls to be private anymore. She didn’t even trust her office now that James had been in it. She hadn’t even noticed him entering, so there were good odds he’d been in there longer than she suspected.

  Now all she had to do was make it through the next couple of hours and drag Shayla to her house where they could run the interference signal built into her anchor and talk without fear of anyone hearing them.

  As the ooze began to pour into the room, faster and faster, bubbling up toward them like a slow-moving fountain of slime, they shuffled backward in the barely lit area. Beastial tripped and went down with a huge oof, Shir-Khan catching his tunic in his teeth and tugging his partner behind him.

  Murmur pulled Sinister closer, and they moved back together, each of them keeping their side in their vision, watching for anything else that might be trying to squeeze through the cracks.

  And then the ooze stopped, halted its movements.

  Just as quickly, instead of coming forward toward them, it began to grow outward, expanding out and up squelching and writhing around itself. Tiny blobs spurted out while it molded itself like some type of wet clay, and then those same blobs rolled back into it, becoming one with it again as it drawn inside by a magnet.

  The sound effects made Murmur want to gag, and she couldn’t look at Sinister because she knew she’d be doing exactly that. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought it was a bunch of people gathered together, puking and making each other puke, while they all groaned at the squelching it made when they moved in the filth.

  And suddenly it stood in front of them, glowing with a dirty green light, just like the slime that had flowed with them to here: a massive cerberus. Its jowls let thick ribbons of slime dangle down, only to have them rise again to meld back with the huge beast. Its eyes seemed to be focused on all of them at once, somehow knowing how they’d move, and where they’d go.

  The three-headed dog growled at them, a loud, skin crawling sound, and Snowy barked, sort of like he was issuing a challenge. All Murmur could think of was how she really didn’t want it to take him up on the idea, and she hoped Snowy hadn’t just got them into far more trouble. But she also knew that was never going to happen.

  Devlish eyed it, moving slightly in front of the rest of them. “Still not sure about that whole ooze thing. My slicing it probably isn’t going to work. It’s slime. It can part and pull itself back together. It just showed us.”

  He took a deep breath and Murmur kicked herself for not realizing it earlier. He was right, damn it.

  “But I’m willing to put myself in front of it. I’m willing to take some hits so we can figure out whatever this fight is going to be.” He sounded so much braver than Murmur felt, so much grander. But he was right, and as she looked around, she realized a couple of things. One was that the lights had slowly booted up in the room, and it wasn’t quite bright, but definitely less dim than it had been. Less limbo-like made it easier for her to breathe.

  The other thing was, that she didn’t think there’d be a way to Evac out of this monster’s sight. While she might not be ready to test her ability to die theory, she also might not have a choice.

  Swallowing down the tinge of fear that tried to wiggle its way into her head, Murmur attempted to think rationally as the beast pawed at the ground, burning the carpet where its drool landed. Another acidic spitting creature was the last thing they needed. She wasn’t sure how many more acid proof shields Devlish even had.

  They spread out in a fan in front of it, none of them taking their eyes off their target. A growl rumbled deep in its throat, shaking the entire room. It was lucky they had enough room to move and that the ceilings were high enough, or else the fight would be a short one resulting in all of their deaths.

  It crouched down, snapping as it did so, both sets of teeth in unison, setting Murmur’s bones on edge. Snowy mimicked the action, snapping at all three heads. She could feel the waves of animosity flowing from him, as if this creature was an affront to what he was, more than just his senses.

  She didn’t have long to think about it, because it pounced at them, its eyes directly going to Devlish as the dread knight threw out his Hatred taunt, forcing the creature to focus on him. He’d been right though; the shield didn’t do much to thwart an attack, pushing back against the gel skin that the creature possessed, almost being swallowed by it.

  Devlish only managed to twist himself out of what could have been a bad predicament by throwing himself to the left and heaving himself out in the process, only narrowly avoiding the dog’s right head as it missed him by a hairsbreadth.

  Murmur had already flung everything she could at it. She weakened it, slowed it, reduced its magic resistance, DoT’d it, and even tried to stun it. The latter had even less effect on the two-headed dog than she thought it would. What with the consistency of what it was, the stun basically just got absorbed. Her best abilities and spells were useless.

 
She attempted to push it back with her Forcefield Push, but again the gel stopped it short. Frustrated she tried another angle. Surely something she had would contribute.

  Throwing out all the stops, she used Binding Shield on Sinister and Rash so that the damage Sin took would be half metered out to Rash, and hopefully be able to keep the healer alive. Even in the first two percent of the cerberus’s fight, the outgoing area damage was hefty. She was going to try Sudden Drop in a bit, but with a ten-minute recast she didn’t want to use it too early in case she missed a better spot in the fight to cast it.

  Frustrated at her Hidden Abilities, she grew irritated with her Sinuous line as well. Nothing worked on actual boss mobs. At least not with any real impact. Sure, on lower level and ordinary mobs it was fine, but their power didn’t extend to a boss. Probably something about balance, but still, they should work on everything—even if it was to a diminished capacity.

  The best thing she could do was maintain the shielding over her friends so they didn’t have to bear the brunt of the melancholy that ran through the castle. If left unchecked, she could see how it would eat at their souls and reduce something to a pile of sentient goop.

  Merlin let out a whoop, pulling her attention away from how she could contribute, to what he was doing. He’d fired a series of flame arrows into the creature, except they weren’t just flame arrows. From what she could see, they sparked once inside the beast and began to burn it from the inside.

  It roared in agony, its darkness shying away from the bright flames, away from the heat. Its body writhed like a festering swamp with bubbles popping to explode pus toward them. Sinister retched but kept healing, her face pale yet determined.

  Exbo followed suit and copied what Merlin had done, and soon the creature was writing in agony with the fire quite literally in its belly. Its skin churned, and the pimples that formed burst constantly. Those that could kept their distance. Murmur laughed at the sight, even though it was quite unsettling to see the way the cerberus came unbound with the fire.

  Its eyes grew sad, and distant, and scared, and she wanted to reach out and pet it, to take its pain away. But Snowy nipped her hand and she understood. That’s just what the creature wanted. It fed off pity, and fear, and pain, not just its own.

  She pulled her mind away from her emotions as best she could, and the resentment that she did so flowed over from the creature. Its eyes lit up with a fire of their own, and it yelped in pain once more as its health steadily dipped down past eighty percent.

  Steeling herself, Murmur braced for whatever was about to come, but seventy-five percent came and went and she realized that Arita—or whatever it was that had redecorated this castle—didn’t like to be predictable anymore. And if nothing else, most game mechanics were like that. Rotational. Predictable. Expected.

  The rangers’ fire arrows. Mellow’s fire bombs. Beastial’s fire roar in a combo with Shir-Khan. All of them dropped the beast’s health by whole percentages.

  All Murmur could do was watch and not contribute. Slowing and lessening its defenses were an arguably good way to increase the group’s damage and lessen the incoming, but damn it, she wanted to do more.

  And then it hit sixty-seven percent. The bubbling of its flesh began to go into overdrive, like its whole body had hit the boiling point. Slowly the bubbles began to expand, like balloons being blown up too fast with too much air for the rubber to contain.

  Murmur knew with sudden clarity exactly what was about to happen. Apparently, so did Veranol. His shield went out over them without a moment’s hesitation about half a second before the damned pustules burst, showering them all with oozing dog guts. Sinister retched again.

  “If nothing else, my stomach should be a bit hardier after this damned game.”

  Murmur raised an eyebrow at Sinister and turned to Veranol. “Cool down probably won’t be back up for the thirty-four percent mark, will it?”

  And then the shield ran out and the dog lunged in to attack them again. Devlish twisted around, almost dancing with Dansyn’s Fleet Feet song pushing him along the way. The tank beckoned to the beast, taunted it, and its eyes grew wild, desperate, as if it had something it needed to accomplish other than just ripping them apart.

  Jinna had been nipping around the back, working on severing what tendons he could reach, but the dog wasn’t stupid, just bizarre and huge. Finally, sick of what must have felt like small pinches to it, it shot out one of its back paws, catapulting Jinna across the room to smash into the stone wall on the far side.

  The air whooshed out of the dwarf, and a crack told Murmur something was broken in the process. She didn’t think it was the stone. Jinna’s cry echoed what she’d surmised, and she turned her full attention back to the monster. It was capable of definite surprises, and she still wasn’t sure how to combat the rain of pus that was going to come down on them all a second time.

  Havoc’s shield wouldn’t work; it only took the damage. It could work, she guessed, but it wasn’t ideal since she wasn’t sure how it would process the damage that continued over time. It wasn’t magical—it was an actual physical ability, so her own shielding wouldn’t cover it.

  Frustrated, she stamped her foot, and was almost sure Snowy sort of chuckled. She glared at him briefly and renewed both her buffs and debuffs.

  A giant paw swatted at Mellow, and their cauldron dissipated as the witch jumped out of the way. They made it, mostly, and the singed ends of their robes revealed a gash in their leg, cauterized by burns and still oozing blood. They winced, and even though Sinister and Veranol threw heals their way, Mellow’s wound didn’t close up properly. It still sat there, glistening like the bloody gash it was. From a couple of angles Murmur was sure she saw bone, but from others it just looked like raw flesh. She tore her eyes away and used Earth Pull to bolster up Berserker on Beastial, since those two seemed to be able to do the most damage in the least dangerous way.

  She kicked herself for not having visited a damned druidic trainer when she had the chance. It was just one of those things she kept putting off, and now it was affecting her gameplay.

  Forcefield Barrier. She knew she could use it for herself, but could she use it to protect her friends. With its vague references to her level and strength of will, she didn’t even know if it would cover all of them, or for how long, but if she didn’t try it out, she also wouldn’t know.

  “I’ve got the next incoming, I think.” She ran the plan over in her head again as the two-headed monstrosity neared forty percent. The fire arrows were still doing an amazing job of embedding themselves just right enough to blow it up and do good amounts of damage each time.

  “Want me to sacrifice Leeroy, just in case?” Havoc’s face pinched in concentration as he threw ability after ability at the target.

  “Yes.” While Murmur was sure her ability would be good, she knew that the second special phase wasn’t going to be as simple as the first. It never was.

  “Got it.” Havoc nodded, his focus never shifting.

  The smell emitting from the giant creature grew worse. Murmur felt bile rise in her throat and fought to choke it down. A few of the others began coughing intermittently, and Murmur noticed a flashing section of her vision. Pulling up her HUD she sighed. Of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy.

  “It’s emitting toxic fumes. We’ll have to cleanse routinely.” Sinister and Veranol didn’t need to be told twice, each of them taking care of their own group. Inching closer and closer to the next special ability, Murmur began to have a very bad feeling about the fight.

  Were those noxious fumes what was contained within the slime? And if the slime lost all cohesion, would they be released without any containment? While future Murmur could worry about it, she knew that particular future wasn’t very far away.

  Thirty-four percent hit and she activated her Forcefield Barrier as soon as she saw the pustules expanding close to explo
sion. Going off the tooltip, she pushed all her determination into the process, the will to protect her friends, to defeat this foe and move on.

  This time the detonation sounded through the room, echoing off the stone walls and hurting her eardrums. Instinctively, she knew they all realized this was different, and Havoc sacrificed Leeroy, letting out a huge scream. The toxic globules rolled off Murmur’s shield just as her head began to throb, and the damage that the gas caused was drawn into Havoc.

  He screamed, his teeth and fists clenched as his veins popped with the strain, and his face paled until it was almost grey. The thumping in Murmur’s head began to crescendo, and she had to drop the shield when tiny black lines started squiggling in front of her eyes.

  Still though, as Havoc bent over, regaining his breath, warded from damage by an overzealous Veranol, Murmur realized they’d all come through the doubled up special attack relatively unharmed. Even if her head was beginning to feel like there was construction going on inside it. No one spoke. Jinna limped toward the dog, and Havoc resummoned his pet, and debuffs and damage picked up once again.

  The huge dog was lumbering now, its right head drooping every now and again as it fought to hold itself up, which only made the left and middle ones angrier and more riled up, and yet unable to move like it wanted because it had to drag the other one with it. Dansyn and Rashlyn suffered several bad bites that leaked into their skin and required extended healing.

  Since the beast didn’t have mana for her to syphon off and disperse, Murmur only hoped that the healers would have enough for the rest of the fight.

  Fire continued to work its magic as long as it was embedded in the beast before it exploded. It didn’t seem as effective if it was already lit up when it hit. As its health slowly ticked down, it enraged, and even Murmur’s Soothe couldn’t bring him out of it.

  It only made his abilities stronger, more lethal. And when it was at eight percent life left, and barely still recognizable as a cerberus, Jinna took the brunt of another vicious throw against the wall. But this time the rogue didn’t get up after he slid down the stone, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.