Dissonance

by K. T. Hanna

  Down to eleven players. She watched as Veranol cast out a resurrection spell to the rogue, bringing him back with only fifty percent health. Jinna stumbled for a moment before his eyes focused properly and he looked her in the eye. “Sorry about that. Didn’t get out of the way of whatever hit me in time.”

  She nodded and kept him in her peripheral visions because he seemed more shaken up by the death than he was trying to let on. But even more cautious, his damage was needed.

  Suddenly when the cerberus hit five percent, he began to projectile spit out strange darts made of hardened slime. Merlin yelped when one struck him and yanked it out, only to cringe at the smell that began to pour out from the wound.

  “Need cure,” he coughed the words out, his voice suddenly rough.

  For the next couple of minutes everyone pulled out all the stops, activating any cool downs they had remaining. Veranol’s shield was back up, and he activated it, giving them all a minor respite from the dodge-the-darts game they were all participating in. Both Merlin and Beastial had been hit by the sharp little things, and their health pools kept dropping gradually lower. Murmur frowned, putting all of her focus on the last two percent of the beast’s health. With all of her debuffs on, she started nuking for all she was worth.

  But zero percent didn’t quite act the way she’d assumed it would. It crumpled to the ground, leaking out in puddles of the ooze that had once seemed sentient. In a way, it appeared to still be sentient as its bits gathered to each other in a huge circle in front of them like metal attracted to magnets.

  Murmur began to back away, certain that this was going to explode in some way. “Move back, huddle together.” She barked out the command, and everyone moved back to her in unison, their eyes never leaving the pool of goo. Three forms began to take shape in the middle of it, rising up out of the ooze.

  Each of them eerily resembling the dogs Murmur Arita had set on them the last time they visited Hazenthorne. The one’s Murmur had chosen not to kill.

  Snowy relaxed, and his hackles went down, a small whimper escaping his throat as the two dogs trotted over to him. Well, hellhounds to be exact. They seemed, happy. Like they’d just been freed.

  Murmur was irritated to see they’d been imprisoned but glad that they’d emerged. But then, just as the group began to relax, she noticed the leftover slime beginning to boil and rolled her eyes. It was getting a bit too much, but she knew both Havoc and Veranol didn’t have their group defensives up, so she readied herself to cast her Forcefield Barrier, extending it to shield the three escaped hellhounds too, and got it up just in time to see the ooze explode into tiny toxic darts headed at them all at break-neck speed.

  Summer Residence

  Home of Laria, David, and Wren

  Summer Condo

  End of Day Sixteen

  Laria let herself into her family condo, knowing that the only person who’d be there was Wren. Perhaps Harlow as well, since she wasn’t entirely sure if Harlow had gone home in the last couple of days—the girl usually tried to appease her mother by being present occasionally.

  She walked through the small space, wishing they’d had more room. The three bedrooms were upstairs, accessed by a landing that looked over the living and dining spaces and the kitchen. Even though the third was so small she could barely call it her office, it was big enough. She paused at the end of the kitchen and pressed at a slightly indented part of the wall, just above her eye level. It wasn’t noticeable if you didn’t know exactly where to look, and was fully intended that way.

  A small panel opened up just in front of her chest, hidden from any type of vantage point that might have a camera or earpiece, or anything that could observe them. Even though she didn’t think anyone had planted anything in her home recently—because otherwise Wren wouldn’t be a secret—she refused to be careless.

  Entering a code onto the tiny screen, she waited for it to prompt her. It was old fashioned, not accessed by the AR gear that everyone used for everything these days. No, this was manual, and therefore less hackable. At least she hoped so.

  She activated the dampening field. When she’d been designing from home for a while, she’d used it then too. It would cut out anyone listening or looking in. Sure. They might be suspicious if they knew she was home, or if they couldn’t see a visual if there indeed was one, but that wasn’t her problem.

  Running up the stairs to check on Wren, she caught a glance of herself in the mirror and shook her head. It was good she was married to someone who didn’t care, not that it would make a difference, because if they did care about that shit, their marriage probably would have been a sham. But with all the shit on her plate, she barely had time to brush her hair, let alone style it.

  She stepped into the room. Harlow was lying on the bed, her eyes active beneath the lids, with Wren reflecting the same REM. Laria frowned as she took in her daughter for a good long moment. She’d been sure she’d begun losing some body mass after two months in the capsule, but now—well, now she didn’t appear to be sickly any longer and had regained some of her natural glow.

  She stroked her daughter’s hair back out of her face again. The stuff seemed to have a mind of its own. Since there wasn’t a breeze in the room, she had to assume it was just Wren’s stubbornness leaking through. Or else Wren had attempted to log out again. Perhaps she’d even moved.

  Cupping her daughter’s cheek, Laria bent down, peering at her eyelids. They were one of the only signs of activity right now, racing beneath the thin skin. “Keep fighting, Wrennie,” she murmured.

  Glancing at the time in the corner of her eyes, Laria balked and turned back to go downstairs. Shayla would be here shortly, and the communication signals in the house were effectively jammed.

  Taking the stairs down two at a time, she almost bounced over to the door, brimming with news to share with the other woman.

  She didn’t have to wait long for the knock, but even so it startled her.

  After letting Shayla in—she had been looking around quite obviously while outside—Laria bolted it, knowing David had night lectures and wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours.

  “Okay, what’s so urgent?” Shayla glanced around the condo nervously and the tension in her shoulders only pulled them up higher. “Are you sure it’s safe here?”

  “I’ve got the dampener on.”

  The relaxation that stole over her friend and co-worker was visible and miraculous. “Oh, thank the gods.” She sighed and staggered over with exaggeration to sit in one of the kitchen nook’s little chairs.

  Laria chuckled, even if it wasn’t the most humorous of situations, Shayla had to be walking on eggshells around the office, knowing so much, and knowing that so much could go wrong at any given time with all of it. She pulled out a couple of bottles from the fridge and opened them with the bottle opener at the side of the counter before handing one to Shayla and taking a swig of the other one herself.

  The beer refreshed, but only slightly. It was the chill more than the taste. Alcohol levels had been on the decline for a number of years, and four percent did about nothing. “James let something slip that’s made me think he’s definitely a spy, but not for who we might have thought it would be. I don’t believe he’s working for Davenport.”

  Shayla took a swig of her own and watched Laria the whole time, her thoughts practically visible in her eyes. “How do you figure he doesn’t work for Davenport?”

  Laria paused, trying to gather the words in her mind. “Because he’s more interested in the headsets and how they work than in the game and how players navigate it.”

  Shayla tapped her finger against the side of the bottle for a few moments, her mouth pulled into a frown. “Well. That’s both a relief and a worry.”

  “I think I know who he’s spying for?” Laria sat down, crossing her arms smugly.

  “Stop teasing, just spit it out, we’v
e both had long days, weeks, months...” Shayla smiled, and stifled a yawn.

  Laria agreed, even if she would have liked to draw it out more. “He got the job with the intention to keep an eye on the development of the headgear. As your assistant he’s in the perfect position to do so.”

  “But he—” Shayla stopped, her eyes widening. Laria saw the same conclusions she’d come to flitting through her friend’s eyes, and she felt quite bad to be the bearer of such dodgy news.

  “Yeah. He wasn’t always your assistant. You basically took him because there wasn’t enough time to go through another interview process before the game launched.” Laria sighed and picked up her bottle again.

  “But Sui seemed so convinced that Ava’s death was his fault.” Shayla bit her lip in concentration.

  “Maybe part of it was, but he also seemed completely taken aback by it, yet another thing he wasn’t sure how to quantify.” Laria’s dislike for James was growing by the moment, as well as her distrust. “I think we need to make sure neither of us is alone with him anymore. He can’t be oblivious to the fact that we don’t trust him.”

  Murmur’s head rung like someone had placed her inside a huge bell and struck it. Sound and pain flitted from one side to the other so fast, she couldn’t quite track it. Pain shot through her several times, right down her spine to her tailbone.

  The next thing she knew, she was lying on the floor. A portion of floor that was blessedly clear of most of the pus, slime, and ooze.

  “What happened?” she asked, sitting up feeling decidedly dazed. Something brushed at her forehead and she started, glancing around for any stray slime, but nothing was there. She chalked it up to the backlash.

  Sinister shot her a glare. “That’s what we’d like to know.”

  Havoc equaled the glare but directed his at Sinister. “Thanks to whatever you did, none of us got hit by those bloody darts. It’s been hard enough cleaning up after the ones we soaked during the actual fight.”

  Keep fighting, Wrennie.

  The blood mage pouted and turned her back on Havoc. Murmur sighed. At least that voice was her mom, which probably explained the touch, too. Sort of. It was far too complex to understand with the splitting headache she had now.

  She knew she’d worried Sin, but it wasn’t intentional. Not in that way anyway. It had been at the back of her mind that using Forcefield Barrier so quickly on such a large scale again was probably going to cause the promised backlash.

  “Sorry. I used Forcefield Barrier for the second time, and should have realized I’d get a bit of backlash for it. But I’m not dead and neither are you, so that’s awesome, right?” She tried to sound upbeat, to make everyone smile, and it worked for the most part, but Sinister nudged her, refusing to make eye contact.

  “Give me some warning if you can next time,” was all she said before she walked away.

  “I’ll try,” was the only answer Murmur could give.

  “Speaking of dogs.” Beastial spoke up, making no sense at all. “These little hellhounds we managed to free seem to have taken a liking to us.”

  Murmur glanced over at Snowy, who looked up at her with his happy and smiley wolf face. It was like he was saying that those dogs were pack. She groaned inwardly and smiled.

  “Do I have to charm them?” she asked the wolf.

  Snowy deliberately shook his head. Murmur turned to the rest of the group and grinned. “Guess we have new traveling companions then.”

  The hellhounds gathered around her, as if Snowy had just told them the good news, and somewhere deep down, she knew that was exactly what he’d done. She brushed her robe off, noticed that there were bits of goop all around on the floor, but none of it seemed to be damaging anything anymore.

  “Guess it’s time we head out then, huh?” She tried to sound excited by it, but her head really was killing her, and her irritation at the drawbacks of her abilities began to seep into her mood. Surely her friends didn’t have all of these limitations?

  “Do any of you have limitations on your hidden abilities?” she asked, trying not to snap out the words.

  Havoc chuckled. “You don’t think me experiencing the pain of the damage I absorb isn’t a limitation? Then I don’t know what is.”

  She kicked herself. Of course they did. It’d be overpowered to think otherwise, but sometimes it would be nice to just be all-powerful. They did it in books and movies all the time, why couldn’t they just let her be godly in a game?

  “Good point. I hadn’t thought of it like that. I thought it was just limited by the bone shards you had to build up.”

  “It is. But I think that’s so I don’t go insane dealing with the fake pain that gets sent to me.” He smiled at her.

  Beastial spoke up too. “I don’t really have limits, but I do have timers, and can’t use specific things until those timers are up, no matter what. I guess those are limitations? Oh, and I’m screwed if Shir-Khan dies, although he isn’t as badly off if I die.”

  It was an interesting twist on their paths, and Murmur nodded, mulling them over in her head as they exited the room and started down the hall once more.

  “If she sends another wave of slime at us, this Arita chick and I are going to have words,” Devlish practically growled.

  Sinister laughed this time, her mood obviously lifting. “I’m pretty sure she’s done with slime. And if she sends blood next, well, I’ve got that covered.”

  “Excellent,” Merlin said in a creepy voice while rubbing his hands together. “Then I say let’s follow this damned path where it takes us, and help our little Hellhound friends here get their revenge.”

  Murmur stopped at the top of a huge winding staircase, staring down at the bottom and stone statues strewn across the floor. Some were of people trying to crawl away from something, their mouths open in screams. Others were people mid-sword swing, who were practically cleaved in two, looking down at their own torsos in horror. Others depicted casters with the wind blowing their robes, shielding their eyes as an explosion bore down on them.

  And in the middle of them all rose a minotaur, its hulking body towering over its victims.

  She stayed at the beginning of the staircase, taking the whole great entrance in, even if it wasn’t at the actual entrance, she got the feeling it should have been.

  “I don’t think we should move,” she whispered and switched to directing her thoughts over guild chat instead, but Havoc beat her to it.

  Havoc: Pretty sure that minotaur was not one of the victims.

  She sighed. You think?

  Mur could feel him chuckle next to her, and leveled a mild glare at him. He shrugged.

  Beastial: Any chance you think we can creep past him? Like even remotely?

  Devlish: I’ll gladly let you try and watch from up here while you die repeatedly.

  Neva: Just hurry up and kill whatever it is and send me its loot. You have no idea what we’re cooking up for you all. Chop chop!

  Murmur chuckled. Trust Neva to lighten the mood. She really loved their new guild member, the way she took care of them, and the way she just fit in so well. Which gave her an idea.

  Jinna, do you think you can sneak around down there and figure out angles, or if there’s a specific way to trigger him awake other than just jumping on his head?

  Jinna: Aye.

  Short and sweet, she watched as the dwarf cloaked himself, barely able to see him but for her see invisibility spell. Sure was a useful skill to have, both invisibility and stealth. Stealthing seemed more reliable, as spells could often wear off before their duration was over if the thing they were convincing you were invisible had too high a detection level, but stealth? Stealth was amazing. It leveled up, and got better and stronger and it didn’t matter what your opponents thought as long as your stealth was high enough.

  He wove in and out of the statues stuck in var
ying degrees of horror on the floor. The huge minotaur didn’t move once. Then again, he’d not yet passed in front of it. Perhaps its eyes were the trigger, when it saw you.

  Suddenly, before Jinna could even move, the minotaur triggered, leaping down so fast with a furious yell, that Jinna barely had time to get out of the way. He stumbled back, breaking his stealth with the fall, and the beast was almost upon him.

  And then, Jinna vanished.

  Murmur couldn’t even see him with see invisible on, and the minotaur crouched, glancing around, looking through the stone statues in slow motion. When it couldn’t find him either, it jumped back onto the pedestal, and froze into place. Still holding her breath, Murmur only let out the pent-up air when Jinna reappeared next to her, shaking slightly, his eyes fixed on the beast in the center down below.

  “What the fuck was that?” Sin asked, sidling in close to Mur, protectively standing half in front of her like she no longer trusted the dwarf.

  “That was sheer luck.” Jinna smiled self-deprecatingly. “It’s a dwarf-specific skill that translates to something like don’t see me. It doesn’t always work either. It has a very low success rate actually. But it worked this time, and I’m not about to look that gift horse in the mouth.”

  “I don’t have a skill like that.” Sinister pouted.

  Murmur tugged at her robe. “Yes, you do. Dark elves get a plus to intelligence, locus got it to charisma.”

  “Oh.” Sinister frowned. “I didn’t pay much attention. I mean, it wasn’t going to change my mind about who to play anyway.”

  “Enough nattering,” Devlish spoke up, his tone somewhat harsher than usual as his eyes studied the area below them.

  Murmur could see the seriousness pinching his brow, almost hear him running over different battle plans in his head. She should have been doing the same. But instead she’d been sidetracked by Jinna’s ability and Sin’s chatter.