by K. T. Hanna
She didn’t know how to say it without sounding completely insane. Because even to her, the idea sounded ludicrous. “Somnia, or the Ais—or, hell, the game—appears to have safe pockets. Like pockets of space where the world itself can protect those it seeks to from others. Perhaps even from itself.”
Davenport watched her for a moment. “Protect itself and others it cares about? Are you suggesting somehow that the world knows what it is?”
Laria hesitated, but neither David nor Shayla gave any indication they were going to help her. Typical. “In a way. I think some of the odd occurrences have distinct correlations to the world of Somnia as a whole becoming aware of itself.”
“Hm.” Even that sound seemed entirely full of skepticism. But Davenport had seen a lot of shit happen over the years. Laria doubted he’d just ignore what she’d said out of hand. But that didn’t answer the question of what was happening to James in the first place.
The older man paused for a moment, brushed a hand through his hair, and stood up straight. “Keep an eye on him, and let me know if my game has decided to grow legs and walk away from us. I’m not sure how I’d chalk up the taxation loss, so I’d need to get my team on it.”
With that, he left the room, a half grin tugging at his mouth. Only Laria got the distinct impression he’d only been half joking.
They said beaches were difficult to run on. Murmur wanted to counter that with water was bloody hard to hike through. When they finally reached the cave mouth, she took a moment to glance around, noticing that the guards Karn and Snowy had mentioned were just visible around the entrance.
The Shalan Guardians stood about nine feet tall, muscles rippling through every aspect of their body. To the human eye, it appeared like they’d been working out since they were teenagers. While it was obvious the species was modeled on sharks, the heads didn’t look like goofy adaptions of a shark puppet.
Their mouths jutted out slightly, opening impossibly wide to show of several rows of teeth on both the upper and lower jaws. And the fins she’d seen through Karn’s eyes were more like flexible knives with painful looking serrated edges.
The guardians at the front were only the beginning. She could feel more groups further up the large stone ramp that led to a clear break in the water. Not to mention in the open space just beyond that. Which she only knew was open because of the way the beings in there moved around. Behind where that prison cell was lived a ray of sadness. She couldn’t identify what it was, but it appeared to have strangled power. No, that wasn’t the right term.
Its powers had been limited. That’s what she’d been looking for.
Except they still had to get past the guards in the water, up the ramp, and then those up in the dry room area before they could deal with the prisoner. She issued a ready check, making sure everyone was paying attention, and felt Devlish shift beside her as his muscles tightened with anticipation of battle.
“Bit bloodthirsty, aren’t we?” she asked with a side eye and a grin.
Devlish smiled, showing his sharp teeth. “Maybe just a bit.” He shifted his stance and called out to the raid. “Move in, now!”
The Shalan Guardians saw them coming as soon as they rounded the entrance. The two groups of three on either side of the ramp’s entrance snarled at them. As one, they moved with spears and approached their incoming attackers. Murmur already didn’t like the intelligence in those eyes, nor the fact she was certain those fins could cut most things to shreds.
The guardians proved her right almost immediately. Karn called it out as her stun got resisted: “Serrated Edge attack incoming.”
Murmur didn’t like the sound of that. Karn was nimble enough to jump out of the way, but the tallest guardian in the first batch lowered themselves into a squash and then spun into a handstand spinning kick that reminded her of capoeira. Those legs were lethal, their flexible blades cutting through anything they touched. Jinna was the first one to fall, while Exbo got a nasty gash, and Ishwa was standing close enough to somehow get an arm cut off.
“Interrupt rotation!” Devlish called out. Murmur agreed, loosing her stuns on the group now they were in range. Except the Shalan appeared to pay attention to stuns only when they had to. A few times her stuns broke earlier than they should have.
Several more of the Shalan managed to release their Serrated Edge attacks successfully. By the end of that first fight, they’d lost four raid members. While resurrecting them, Murmur made sure to cast Agility on everyone she could for whom it wouldn’t cancel out something more beneficial for their class. If more agility prevented mage sashimi, then she was all for it making the fights easier for them.
They had a lot of these Shalan Guardians to get through before the real fights would begin. It wasn’t just a feeling; it was her sensing nets. There was so much more to go before they’d manage to finish this zone.
Somnia Online
Somewhere in Limbo Near the Continent of Cenedril
Location Scattered - Ruptured Fissure
Day Thirty-One
The space around them was pitch black, and yet Riasli reveled in it. She felt so at home in this space. After all, it was where a part of her had sprung from. Sure, it wasn’t the original island that would sprout up once all the keys were gathered together to reveal the age-old enemy of Somnia. Nope, now it was a new thing, its very own thing.
Right now, it was the prison limbo that encased the essence comprising of most of Michael’s brain. In their scattering over the entire world, they’d managed to enter the one place nothing should have been able to go, but for the fissure. Coalescing around the hidden end of game battle arena, they’d been sucked into the beast’s being, subverting its own programming and giving it a brand-new personality.
Riasli pushed down her irritation as James clung to her leg, whimpering incoherently as she dragged him with her. His mind probably couldn’t comprehend where they were or what they were doing. Indeed, he probably shouldn’t have been able to get in here.
But she’d adjusted his output ever so slightly to resemble that of an NPC. Which was why those people on the outside were having such a time finding him. If, indeed, they were looking for him at all. She’d done that on purpose, though. Couldn’t use a hostage if they were yanked out from under you. And even if he was one of the worst people on the face of the planet outside of this game, he was still human, and she was ever so certain that Murmur wasn’t about to let a human suffer needlessly.
Who goes there?
Every time she came to visit, he asked the same thing. It got to the point where she wanted to use another name just to fuck with him. Perhaps some of the mischief maker in Thra had leaked over and into Riasli’s persona. At any rate, it got a pretty decent workout.
“Me. I brought you a present.” She purred out the words, loving the freedom to think and speak for herself. James still hung on her leg as she finally made it to the island Michael had taken over.
I need not be given gifts. I have them all. I can feel them all.
Even Riasli could tell he was wasn’t in the best mood right now. He was hungry, and she didn’t think knowledge alone was going to fill him up for much longer. He wanted much more than that. His drive centered around knowing how to read people, their minds, their souls, their innermost fears. Michael was ambitious, and Riasli could feel the power he exuded.
It was much more difficult to gather the power he needed in secret if he began draining the brains of those people feeding into the system. So she struck a delicate balance, trying to play the middle woman. He thrived on thoughts, on the knowledge gained from them. All of their pain and suffering, all of their nightmares, and the knowledge of how to leverage all of it. Right down to how they accessed the system and used thoughts to direct the HUD and make all their decisions.
For the one who’d created the device that made it all possible, his original intentions took over his mind, driving him to feed on all of the details he could gather.
Riasli dragged J
ames to his feet and threw him in front of Michael. She watched impassively as he fell to his knees on the hard rock of the island. His eyes, still unseeing and scared, watered like he’d smelled something vile.
That tiny part of his mind that could still tell white from black shuddered, panicking in its blocked-off corner. He knew what was in front of him; he could tell. She wasn’t sure how, but…
Ah. I see? Worms. The lot of you. But you had potential.
And then Michael laughed. Riasli hated the sound, always had. There was no warmth about it. He’d transcended from what he was into something she couldn’t yet understand, but somehow, at the same time, something she wanted to be.
So much power and surety. Corrupting the whole system couldn’t have been easy.
Let me see you, James. In all your pitiful glory.
It made the elf curl into a tighter ball until Riasli was surprised he could still breathe. She no longer wasted the time on filling his head with blind obedience to her. He was waking up in there, but no longer in control of himself. Instead, all she could sense was terror at what he’d done and what he didn’t believe could have happened.
“It’s almost time for the island to rise,” she said trying hard to contain her excitement. The time when everything would click into place. The time when he would rise along with the island that held him imprisoned. He watched her, his massive rock like eyes glinting with a dull red. He nodded and gestured toward James.
I like this gift. Bring me more. Just like this. It’s easy to drink this much fear.
Riasli nodded, and skipped away, leaving James in the clutches of the monster Michael had become.
The raid moved out, and the water fell away from them as they stepped out of it and onto dryish land still inside the domed cave. Murmur didn’t remember seeing a dome in the lake, but nothing that occurred in underwater battles made sense to her anyway. She was just glad to be out of the water while they fought the Shalan. Underwater timing did her head in.
Murmur glanced around the massive cavern, just as one of the groups of Shalan saw them. She knew they’d be on the dry part of land too, even though it made no sense in her brain at all; obviously the world had twisted the physics to make it work. Per usual.
Behind them all, locked in by cruel iron bars, she thought she spied a turtle. An extremely large turtle, like a smaller version of the world turtles of legend.
Quest Initiated: Sheladrios’s Plight
You have been given the task to rescue Sheladrios from his troublesome fate.
To accomplish this, you must first defeat all of his jailers—all of them, even the ones you can’t see at first.
And the ones you can see aren’t all of those that there are.
Good luck, adventurers. Sheladrios is depending on you.
“Well, isn’t that nice,” muttered Risk, and he turned to Murmur, even as the first group of Shalan collided with the front line of defense. “You always manage to pull the riddles out of everything, it seems.”
He turned his back on her before she could respond, and while grateful that for the first time she could really remember in a while, Risk hadn’t been a complete douchebag to her, she wasn’t exactly sure what he’d been getting at.
These damned quests had nothing to do with her. She’d have thrown it all away if she could. Killing was always easier for her…when she had the time to put into learning the fights.
Murmur got busy Mezing the second incoming group before it hit caught up with the second. Keeping them separated was vital to fewer deaths while fighting them. Though not boss level, these were hefty raid trash. They were about double as difficult to deal with as the groups they’d been eliminating on their way to this massive cavern. Her stuns, even though they weren’t always successful against the Shalan, were vital to helping prevent the Serrated Edge attacks. For now, anyway.
Luckily, the Shalan were very susceptible to ice, as most things in the zone appeared to be. It definitely made the mages’ damage spike nicely, and the rangers had ice arrows they could use as well. All in all, with the effects on most of the melee weapons, the ice buffs made for a very effective fighting force.
That the Serrated Edge had no telegraphed warning, except for a split second ability bar that passed in the blink of an eye, was damned frustrating. They were standing one minute and then they were performing a diving kick in which their back legs shot through as they did a somersault, twirling them around in a circular motion like a break dancer and severing anything in their path.
At least fighting them on land and not in water made it easier for the raiders to move out of their way. The water slowed all the movements of the raiders down as long as it didn’t pertain to spells, dealing damage, or healing. Avoidance measures? Nope, let’s allow real-world physics to affect those sorts of movements. She would have rolled her eyes if she thought it made the locus look any different.
Holding down three with her Mez wasn’t uncomfortable, but she did have to make sure Annulment was in place. Keeping to the lip of the ramp, they managed to remain far enough away from the other guard patrols that they didn’t draw their attention. Two groups at a time was a manageable amount.
Usually Murmur would have been perturbed by the fact that none of the other patrols seemed to see them. However, huge stone pillars blocked a lot of views. They weren’t carved or ornate. Nothing truly pretty about them. But they appeared to be made out of raw rock. She’d ruled out stalagmites and stalactites because they weren’t the right formation, but these pillars were roughhewn rock, stretching from the floor up around twenty-five feet from the top of the cavern.
The massive area had about nine of them at a quick glance, which meant there were potentially at least nine fights for them to get through before they could free the turtle, if that was even the way they were supposed to complete the quest.
A massive roar echoed out, and Murmur swiveled to try and figure out where it was coming from. The only place she’d thought anything else could be had been in the cage, but the turtle cowered there, trying to make its massive self as small as it could, and it was failing abysmally.
Refreshing her Mez, Murmur sent a thought out to Snowy for him to go and find the source of the roar. The raid kept slogging along at the group of guards, finally breaking into the ones she’d been holding immobile. Murmur moved in Snowy’s direction, wanting to see for herself. That roar had her worried, like the quest had lulled them into a false sense of security and there was much more to this encounter. Well, really, it did tell them. She’d just hoped it had exaggerated.
You know I don’t exaggerate things like that.
If this is your quest… Murmur paused, sighing.
Somnia took a moment to reply. They’re all my quests, but no, I didn’t trigger it. I just altered it so it was doable. Frankly, with all the crap in the current version of Somnian dungeons right now, it’s amazing this one is even functioning.
What do you mean by that? Murmur was genuinely surprised.
I just mean there’s only so many hints I can give—so just pay attention. Things have been twisted and aren’t as they were planned. It’s all the help I can give you without warning HIM.
Murmur waited a moment, but it seemed Somnia was finished. Rescue him from even the opponents you can’t see at first, eh? She frowned, fully aware that the raid had almost defeated their first set of Shalan since the quest appeared. Maybe killing a certain amount of them released their captain or something…
Snowy slunk back, his stealthy movement only noticeable because she was specifically looking for him. He sent her pictures of what appeared to be a cracked section of rock walling, but knew it was probably some sort of hidden door or passageway.
“At some point in the fight, we’re going to trigger a massive boss mob. Conserve mana.” At least she hoped she wasn’t wrong. Conserving mana was always a good idea anyway.
The first group down, Devlish waited until everyone’s hit points and mana replenished. First lot
down. It was time to see how many more it would take.
Inching away from the top of the ramp, the entire raid moved as one, approaching the first pillar on the right. Anti-clockwise, sure, Murmur could deal with that.
Even as they moved, though, Snowy’s hackles stood on end, and she could feel the growl low in his throat as he kept his gaze on where he’d stealthed to previously. If he was concerned, then Murmur wasn’t about to let her guard down. Readying herself for the next wave of incoming, she grimaced slightly before reaching out beyond the apparent cave to catch movement, feelings, and spells before they reached the raid.
Hopefully it would give them all enough time to react.
Somnia Online
Continent Cenedril
Proximity to the Curet Ruins - Curet City
Emilarth’s Balcony
Day Thirty-One
“It really is peaceful up here.” Belius sighed and turned to his sister. “Sorry I stole your locus. I’d worked on them so much, I didn’t want to give them up.”
She glanced at him before putting her hands on the railing and peering over into the canopy below. “Yeah, I was being a bit of a shit trying to take them, but you know me. I called dibs before you did. That’s what I do.”
She hadn’t been angry at him anymore for a long time. She paused and watched as a bird landed right next to her, singing in a soft trill. “Do you feel that?”
Belius nodded, a sad expression entering his eyes. “Yeah. I don’t want to feel it, though. It tells me that the world is more infected than I realized, and that makes me feel…I think it’s sad.”
“Yeah.” For a few moments they simply stared at the beautiful rainforest. Right down to the scent, that damp invigorating scent that spread through everything around them. It felt so alive, so real, it was difficult for her to believe that maybe it wasn’t. Because it was to her.
“It’s real for us, though,” Belius said, his tone still melancholy echoing her thoughts almost exactly. “Isn’t it?”
