Dissonance

by K. T. Hanna

  Finally, they fell into a rhythm of area effect spells and abilities, stuns and damage. Only one or two of the ghouls managed to escape the stun at a time, and all preventative interrupts focused on the casters. At least they’d only lost one of them while learning the trash.

  Don’t you think this is too easy?

  The words whispered through Murmur’s head again. Only this time it was Riasli. A sinuous whisper that didn’t seem to relent. It looped through her head causing doubt and reflection.

  Come on, Murmur. You’re quite smart. Did you ever think there’s a reason we let you win all the time?

  Murmur scowled and grunted with exertion as she cast her last Concussive Blast, which froze their opponents enough for one last time that seven of the nine fell down dead in one go.

  You gain bonus experience for grouping your kills to die in the same blow - Bonus for seven (7) deaths.

  They needed all the bonus help they could get. Especially with Riasli having somehow taken up residence in her mind. Murmur was certain of it now. Before she’d only suspected it, but now she needed to speak with Telvar to figure out how this was happening.

  Very well. Make yet another mistake.

  She brushed severed fingers off her clothing that had been left behind in the final blast from Havoc that decimated the remaining ghouls in the group. Ridding herself of severed anything hadn’t exactly been on her life’s to-do list.

  She shook her head, trying to remember that this was just Somnia. That Riasli couldn’t be real, could she? All these words were just in her head, just the rogue enchanter trying to play with Murmur’s mind. She glanced at Snowy who stood proudly next to Shir-Khan, his wise and intelligent blue eyes far too worldly, and she smiled. Maybe just Somnia wasn’t even a thing anymore. There was out there, and there was Somnia, and it felt oddly comforting now.

  Nine of the little buggers had proven challenging, yet killing several of them at the same time yielded more experience per kill.

  “Let’s try not to pull the extra group.” She didn’t even want to say that. She wanted that extra experience boost, but realistically, if her stuns fucked up, they’d all lose triple the experience they’d gain by being reckless.

  “Got it, got it.” Havoc pouted. “I just really wanted to see how much damage that did.”

  “Not enough to warrant juggling twelve of those mobs at once.” Devlish grinned. “We have an enchanter tanking after all. Gotta be careful with those clothies.”

  Havoc pointedly looked down at his own armor, and raised an eyebrow. “Gotta be careful, eh?”

  Devlish barked a laugh. “Not with you. You can raise the dead. Careful with you in a whole different way.”

  “Let’s kill shit.” Sinister broke in. “It’s useless being this efficient if we’re just going to chat away the extra time we gain between pulls. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of not leveling.”

  Murmur chuckled. There it was, the side of Sinister that rarely came out: the no bullshit gamer. It probably didn’t help that Murmur had already hit forty. Sin got a little competitive. It was one of the most endearing things about her.

  “Ready when you are.” Murmur nodded at the tank and Devlish returned the gesture, reinforcing the black smoky rippling aura around him as he taunted another pack of the ghouls.

  Stepping into the center, Murmur began the rotation yet again. Shift. Flux. Concussive Blast. She really wished she had an area of effect magic resistance debuff; it’d make the pesky and annoying resistors at least fewer.

  Yet having one or occasionally two of them bashing on her for all of eight seconds wasn’t too bad. They were still limited in their swings per second, and slowed by either her or Veranol, sometimes even by Dansyn depending on the songs he was playing. They didn’t need to have precision for these either, it was simply mow them down by brute force. AoEing all the way.

  After Sinister’s admonishment, Devlish basically waited on Murmur’s mana to hit seventy-five percent before he pulled another two packs. Eight, occasionally nine of the ghouls ended up fanning out in an almost abstract art wheel of death around Murmur. They gained bonus experience for all of the eight only one time, because generally five or so died a split second before the others. Still, apparently having five or more die counted to some sort of achievement, and Murmur wasn’t about to give up that extra leg up.

  Still though, she was getting tired, and she knew this was just the trash. They’d already passed two doors, and still had a ways down the hall to go. It was more tiring than she’d thought. Keeping her net extended, her basic shielding over the others, and applying her constant stuns to the mobs as well as debuffs when she could? It was exhausting being an enchanter.

  But damned if she didn’t love it.

  “Is this the last pack?” She heard someone say, probably Havoc. Her head was spinning with the effort to keep the stuns in place, with the effort to keep the ghouls out of reach of everyone else. She shook it to clear up her vision and noticed the next pack stood in front of two massive doors that dwarfed them where they stood.

  “Might be the last pack of these, but we are definitely not done with this dungeon yet.” And as she cast her first Shift, she realized how true her words were. Just beyond her reach, past all of the doors they’d left behind them, sat a well of emotions she couldn’t separate. Some of it angry, some of it sad, and most of it malevolent.

  And all of it directed toward Fable.

  Storm Entertainment

  Somnia Online Division

  Game Development Offices - Conference Room

  Late Day Eighteen

  Laria sat with her head in her hands going over the meeting they’d just gotten out of in looping circles of encroaching madness. Davenport knew. Not only did he know, he was eager to help them figure out how to remove Wren without alerting their investment partners. He’d provide distraction, which was about all he could do, and they had to figure out the hard part.

  She almost felt sorry about not including the AIs in their recounting. Only she felt it wasn’t her place to say anything about the AIs, because as far as she was concerned, they were practically people. And as such, they had the right to live or exist by their rules. She didn’t think it fair to break their silence herself.

  Shayla didn’t seem to disagree.

  Laria eyed her friend as surreptitiously as she could.

  “You’re failing abysmally.” Shayla sounded tired. “Just talk, I’m getting sick of trying to figure out what everyone else is thinking or doing. Just be straight with me, Lar, and we’ll be fine.”

  Shayla sounded exhausted, even more so than Laria. “Sorry. Habit. Trying to communicate with you via your mind.”

  At least Shayla chuckled at that. Then she stretched, her arms up high above her while she inhaled as much oxygen as possible. “You know what? After we’ve got through all of this? I’m taking a bloody vacation. Somewhere they don’t need air regulators, somewhere concrete jungle isn’t a reality. Somewhere more like the worlds we make for people to escape into.”

  Laria snorted. “Looks like you’re stuck with Somnia no matter which way you go then.”

  “True.” Shayla fell silent for a moment. “Do you think he’s known all along?”

  Laria shook her head. “No, but he’s probably suspected ever since I asked for the containment pod to further research certain aspects of the game play. He’s not stupid, and I never should have treated him as such. Hell, I shouldn’t have treated anyone as such. Least of all you and Wren.”

  “But if she can die, then surely she can log out.” Shayla tasted the words on her tongue, like she wasn’t sure they were real yet.

  “True, true.” Laria closed her eyes and pressed the heels of her hands against them, trying to stop from seeing the little worms that were trying to wiggle across her vision with the visual migraine bullshit. “You’d think
that. But I’ve seen her physically, mentally attempting to log out. The sheer pain it causes her is ridiculous. There has to be a way to get the connection to drop. Though it sounds really creepy, right now she’s completely connected to that world. It wants her, it needs her, and it’s refusing to let her go.”

  “Well, either way you look at it.” Shayla pushed herself up to standing. “We’re farther along than we were. She can die in-game, even if it gives her odd after effects, and if she can die in game, the odds are much better now that we can figure out a way to pull her out of there.”

  Laria narrowed her eyes. “Either that or we completely sever any attachment she has between the two.”

  Shayla deflated somewhat. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “Obviously. I’m her mother, I have a meticulous ability to look at all the pros and cons in the world of my daughter, including the shitty ones like that.” She sighed and pushed herself up too, fed up with being at work, fed up with having no answers.

  “Then, might I suggest a jolly jaunt toward home, via a little visit to our favorite rogue AI trio?” Shayla winked at Laria, and suddenly it didn’t quite matter anymore. They were doing what they could, and if she knew Wren at all, her daughter wasn’t going to let a pesky thing like reality get in her way.

  Murmur backed up, Snowy at her side like a shadow, but white, which made no sense at all. She shook her head, glancing up at the doors in front of them, and then back to the four doors—two on each side of the massive corridor—that they’d passed on their way to the end of this area.

  “I don’t think we’re supposed to go through the big doors first.” She backed away, heading the way they’d come from.

  “Which order do you think we do them in?” Devlish asked her.

  She shrugged. “If that’s five, these will probably be one through four.”

  “Why five—” Dansyn commented, only to stop as he noticed the huge five above the doors, gleaming in the low light like liquid tar.

  “Right you are.” Mellow winked, faking a very bad English accent. “One, two, three, four, and five equal fifteen.”

  “If we started with five, the other numbers would go up, thus exceeding a sum of fifteen?” Merlin frowned. “That’s a very odd riddle. You could blow it completely without realizing it.”

  “Only if you’re paying no attention at all.” Murmur shrugged and came to a stop at front left door, when facing the bigger room. Above it, was a huge one. The one across from it held the number two.

  “So. We should probably defeat one first, then cross to here and hit two, then down past one to three and then to four and five.” Sinister voiced the thoughts in Murmur’s head and she nodded in agreement.

  “Well let’s hope there aren’t any doors inside the rooms, right?” Beastial grinned, making Sinister groan. She glared at him.

  “Fantastic. There probably will be. But if we go into three from one, then the next doors would be five and seven, maybe? We’d totally blow fifteen out of the water. So, make sure no one runs through any doors once we’ve faced whatever is in there, before we manage to check out which way is best for us to go.” Murmur eyed her friend, proud of the speech, proud of the way she was beginning to look beyond just killing shit.

  Getting in the mindset of a healer from a pure DPS class was always difficult. Not that it was any easier in the reverse. Still though. They were really starting to work more as a team and less like the group of people she directed.

  “Then I guess we’re going to start with room one.” She smiled, and even Snowy seemed in good spirits. Murmur began buffing all of them again. While she couldn’t wait to see what they’d do as a guild raiding group with forty-two people, she loved raiding with her closer friends.

  Devlish nodded, his aura sheathing around him like a black oozing glove, and he pushed the door open. Nothing happened.

  The room was empty but for the sconces that lined the walls, five along each, all lit and leaving the center darker than the edges. A gorgeous wooden floor spread out before them, polished so much it shone. Flames danced and flickered in the light reflected by the mahogany, and the stone walls dulled it just enough that it wasn’t overwhelming. They all filed into the room, making sure to stick to the outer wall and not disturb anything that might be underneath them—or invisible or whatever. As soon as they’d all moved into the room, the door shut behind them. The only reason Murmur knew which door they’d come in was that she was still standing next to the one she’d entered through. There were two more doors on two of the other sides, and only one wall without a door.

  She sent a mental image to Snowy to scratch this door, or mar it somehow. Then they wouldn’t fuck up once they were done. He obliged her, but the scratch filled itself in, and he raised a wolf eyebrow at it, as if asking it if it was serious. Despite the situation, Murmur smiled.

  “Try and remember how it smells, then,” she told him, giving him a pet.

  “Mur.” Sinister sounded alarmed, and Murmur turned her attention away from her pet, only too wish she hadn’t.

  The walls appeared to be warping, in such a way that it spun her vision, and the floorboards flowed in the opposite way, distending the room to almost funhouse of mirror levels. Her head swam and she had to steady herself even though she logically knew there was no way for this to unseat her.

  Her legs weren’t actually moving; her head just thought she was. It was full of soggy cotton wool, heavy and unmanageable. She frowned, certain she’d left her Shield Expansion on, and cursed at herself when she realized it must have dropped accidentally when she had all her attention focused on stunning the last of the ghouls.

  With the shields back in place, while still disorienting, the sheer unsettling vibe wore off. She eyed her HUD, wondering if she could set an alarm to sound for when one of her buffs wore off, only to be interrupted by a very shrill, ear-piercing shriek that emanated through the room.

  She watched as the sconces shifted, this time not enhanced by anything other than the fact that they were moving. She saw them click together like a weird Voltron made of old-fashioned torches. And then she really wished they’d been as simplistic as the old-fashioned robot toy she’d read about in one of her animation history courses.

  Because standing in front of her was a fire beast made out of torches soldered together, giving it an impregnable appearance. Why was it always fire or stone, or undead? She heard Havoc muttering under his breath and knew he was pissed off because it was obviously not his forte.

  Who disturbs the Torch of Lilithheim? Have you come prepared?

  The voice boomed around them, through them, on a visceral level that left Murmur feeling like she might puke. It was all she could do not to give into the temptation and form some sort of coherent answer in her mind that it might accept.

  “We of Fable journey here to free this place from its curse.” Mellow blinked back at Murmur, a look of surprise on their face.

  Murmur was fine with Mellow taking the lead. They’d proved more than once that puzzles were their thing, and frankly, Murmur was sick and tired of figuring that shit out. Couldn’t they just kill monsters, get experience and, well...have fun?

  The Torch stopped its continuous movement for several moments, rocking gently back and forth to maintain whatever passed for its balance. Almost like it was thinking.

  You would seek to break the curse?

  Mellow radiated calm, Murmur hadn’t thought them capable of, or anyone in their party. Instead of panicking or grasping for the answers the beast wanted, Mellow simply nodded. “We seek to break the curse, the ancient locus curse.”

  The Torch lit up brightly, but this time a silver flame that shot stars of light everywhere, like a happy rain of sparks. Murmur watched as strings of words passed before her eyes, as her quest journal lit up much like the Torch, and as her list of tasks to do grew unbearably long.

 
Then each of you must take a torch, behold a part of me.

  One then two then three then four, don’t skip any or three.

  Let my light guide you when the time seems most right.

  Lift the curse, the dark, the doom, and free us from our plight.

  With that, the fire beast dissipated and silvery torches flew through the air to land with each of them. They were so bright, it was difficult to look at them, and so most of them chose to look past them to see the rest of their friends.

  Mellow chuckled. “Well, I guess that answers that, right? Riddle solved.”

  “How did you know?” Murmur asked. It was the first time she’d noticed that someone in the group had a quest she didn’t. But it only made sense of course, except Mellow was a locus too! How had Murmur missed this one?

  Mellow shrugged. “Part of the locus witch lore. Something about a slumbering coven who were put in their place when the locus took over the area. To be honest, I’d totally forgotten I had that quest. I got it at like level three or something and only performed a portion of it that involved some seriously sketchy alleyways in the bad part of Stellaein.”

  Murmur stopped, remembering her own quest, the alley quest, where she’d first met Emilarth, and where she’d heard that really strange conversation. Perhaps she also needed to look further into things.

  Congratulations, your memory hasn’t completely failed you. You have remembered a long-forgotten quest. Forgotten by you, not those who gave it out. Remember that.

  You may find clues to it in here, but this is not a quest you share with anyone here. Every aspect of it is different.

  Murmur sighed, there was no way it was going to be that easy. She hefted her gaudily glowing torch in her hand and headed out the door Snowy indicated was definitely the one they’d originally entered with. Across the hall and to room two it was. She only hoped it was a bit more of a challenge than the first room had been.