by K. T. Hanna
Masha nodded and walked away to soothe over things with his guild as best he could, but Risk stood there, glaring at Merlin as if he wanted to rip the high elf a few new holes.
“This is so stupid. A fight like that should have given us some mega loot.” He spat out the words, obviously pissed off. But Merlin just flashed his smile again, and the Spiral tank stomped away back to his guild.
It took them a while to get going after the last battle, and Murmur was already feeling antsy. There were glimpses every now and again that made her wonder if the dungeon was corrupted already. Darker spots here and there, like the dungeon was alive and waiting for them to slip up. She wouldn’t put it past the brain shards to do this to a place. Especially a place that had been locked up since the brain explosion and was probably overrun with getashi.
Especially in the dungeon, that if she wasn’t mistaken, belonged to Belius.
Hell, right now it ate at her, and she had to actively make herself aware of what she was doing in order to double check that she hadn’t suddenly gone evil.
She scratched behind Snowy’s ears, drawing comfort from the wolf that never left her side. He’d grown in size since they’d joined up all those weeks ago. His head sat at her hip now, and for a locus who was already tall, that meant this wolf was ridiculously large. Sometimes she wished he was real.
Why would he not be real?
Somnia’s question startled her. Because he’s a part of Somnia. He’s a part of this world.
What makes a world real?
Murmur balked, trying to keep her eyes out for any danger up ahead while also attempting to make sense of the questions she was being asked. A real world is tangible, it holds solidity and realism, and you don’t need a VR headset to access it.
Ah. Somnia seemed to pause for a moment before continuing. Are you sure you still need the headset to swap between the two?
The presence disappeared, but the discomfort caused by the question didn’t. As soon as she could log out again, Murmur had a heap of things to check up on. Snowy just pressed his head against her and let his tongue lol out.
But a split second later, his hackles stood up, and he growled in the back of his throat.
“Best early warning system ever, that wolf.” Risk eyed Snowy warily, as if he was waiting for the wolf to attack him.
“Snowy? Yeah…” She glanced at him fondly, even while she engaged her own sensing nets to check on their enemies. “He’s awesome. We also have incoming. There must be a fork in the path up ahead, because I show them coming from two directions. Not sure what they are, though.”
She bit her lip as she tried to assess the type of beast that would approach them.
An infected Cirician scout rounded the corner and answered her question. It was slighter than the build of the others they’d fought before, but it was taller. As if the infection made them grow, gave them more power. Murmur wasn’t sure that was a good thing, at least not for the raid.
She could sense more of them, and just as the scout was about to sound an alarm from what Murmur could gather, two arrows landed simultaneously in the creature’s eye sockets, killing it instantly.
She blinked and looked up to find both Merlin and Exbo not too far away. “Nice shots.”
“Lucky, to be honest. It was preoccupied with finding you, I think. Took it a while to begin broadcasting, so it shouldn’t have reached too much back up.” Merlin sighed.
“How did you know?” Murmur asked, a little incredulously. She hadn’t heard a thing.
“Elf ears. They work in mysterious ways.” He winked at her, and she could have sworn even Snowy was grinning.
Ready stances. Incoming. Devlish’s voice carried over the whole raid, thanks to the associated chat. Infected approaching.
The chittering reached them long before the rest of the scouts and the soldiers bombarded them. The halls weren’t small and confined like the entrance to the temple had been, but it was still closer quarters than Murmur would have liked with that may people and beasts combined.
Assisting Rashlyn and Esolan, the raiders began to methodically tear into the creatures that were attacking them. Their blood was green, likely from the infection, and their eyes were crazed with white spots dancing constantly through their irises. They resembled their brethren only in shape and design. Their carapaces were tinged a sickly pale green or yellow and weren’t as resilient as those they’d fought before. Softer and weaker, it was easier for their weapons to cut through or smash.
However, they weren’t defenseless. And in quarters where they were stuck with a maximum of ten of them across, fighting became limited.
People like Rashlyn who fought with flying and spinning kicks and punches were limited in the amount of force they could put behind restrained movements. Archers headed to the back and had to allow their shots to fly in an arcing way to avoid hitting their own people. Overall, it restricted the quality of their fighting and therefore the flow of the battle.
Even with Murmur and the bards providing stuns and Mezes, the proximity was awkward and difficult to navigate. Sinister cried out as a septic gash sliced down her left-hand side. The grimace on her face was real as the edges of her skin curled back, immediately infected too. Veranol had to heal her to full for the debuff to fade, and then they needed a poultice from Mellow before the DoT disappeared.
Luckily, she’d been siphoning health from several different Cirician soldiers. It’s probably what saved her. Murmur frowned, placing a shield around Sin. If it was more difficult to penetrate through, then perhaps that wouldn’t happen again.
What was real here? Because that wound looked damn real. She wished Somnia had never put the idea in her head in the first place.
The fight raged on around her and she turned to keep her eye on the battle again. Most of their allies seemed to be having a good time. Especially Jirald. There were no scratches on him yet. His black gear melded into the shadows perfectly, giving her the chills. If she hadn’t been concentrating on him, she wouldn’t have known where he was. Would she even see him coming if he turned on her?
Cirician soldiers didn’t know the meaning of retreat. They seemed to band together even tighter every time several of them died. Like magnets, seeking to make each other stronger, to weaken the enemy. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.
While she hadn’t kept exact track of the time, she did know that they’d been fending these creatures off for the last twenty minutes or so. People were beginning to run low on mana, especially the healers and Mellow, who ran around tending to those who were injured. Letting them die wasn’t an option, because of the type of dungeon this was. Murmur wasn’t certain that the dead would be permitted to enter again before fighting was finished.
“Any end in sight?” she asked no one in particular, knowing that someone would answer anyway.
Beastial grunted. “Maybe. Shir-Khan snuck around to take a look. It appears as if this is the last swarm of them.” His own mana was low, and he had a heap of small wounds all over his body, where the skin was peeling outwards, beginning to show sinew and muscle beneath it without the flesh to encase it.
“Get healed, Beast,” she muttered and triggered her raid speech. Healers, keep an eye on potential DoTs and debuffs. Players, seek treatment if your wounds are getting in the way of performance. We should be done with this wave soon.
“Just a wave?” Masha called over the heads of several of his raid members.
“Probably,” Murmur answered. Tactics-wise, it didn’t make sense for all the infected to approach them here. No, they’d move on them when least expected as the raid was moving through the tunnels.
The chittering came from all around them. These halls and caverns—they were their home, or it had been before they became infected and apparently lost all reason. The other Ciricians had been willing to talk, which wasn’t a bad thing. But these on
es, it was as if the infections had taken away their minds.
When the last one fell to the ground, its head severed, Murmur wanted to collapse herself. Except they couldn’t afford to lower their guard. They needed to be wary now more than ever. Murmur had no intention of growing complacent.
She looked over the raid. Everyone needed to recover. All of them. She inspected the gear of Spiral and Exodus. It was okay, but it didn’t match Fable’s gear. If they were going to get through this, she needed to make sure her guild wasn’t carrying everyone on their backs the whole way, like they had so far.
So she sent a message to Neva. Hey. We need some solid weapons for our allies. Nothing enchanted, but something with decent stats that won’t cost me a fortune, but will be better than what they have. Do we have enough stores?
It took a few seconds for the other to respond. I have the materials, but are you sure about that? I mean, I won’t put any enchantments on them, and I’ll likely just use steel for them. But this is giving them an advantage they didn’t have before.
I know. It’s either that, or these raids fail before they have a chance to succeed.
Got it. Neva paused. Are you okay, Murmur? You seem a bit out of it lately.
I’ll be okay. I promise. Just have a lot of changes to my character to get through.
Neva: Got it. If you link me their profiles I can check what they’ve already got and we can see if we even need to upgrade them.
Murmur leaned back against the tunnel wall and closed her eyes briefly. A few moments later, there was a hand on her shoulder, and she looked up to find Merlin sitting next to her. “You looked like you were sleeping, and Sin didn’t want to leave you alone here.”
“Where’s she gone?” Murmur asked, spinning around to try and find her.
“Relax. She’s just checking over some wounds on the other side of the area.” He leaned back against the wall too, his knees raised and his hands draped over them.
“Shir-Khan is scouting?” Merlin asked as Beastial also came to rest against the wall. He was super tall, and the form he’d chosen was muscle filled as well.
The beastmaster nodded. “Best thing for it. He can stealth now and work his way around things.”
“Awesome. This way we’re not going to sacrifice our people. If his stealth is good, he can use this as time to practice for his life in the future.” Murmur smiled at Snowy, who hadn’t left her side ever since she sat down. Maybe she should have slept for longer instead of trying to cram everything she needed to do in at once.
“You sure this is what we need to do, Mur?” The large viking leaned in closer, as if willing her to tell him the truth.
“Yeah, Beast. I think if we don’t, the world will become corrupt, and a part of us along with it. We can’t let that happen.”
The mood remained somber. With her group’s headsets giving them a deeper connection to Somnia, they understood her urgency now. They understood the depth of the problems that faced this world.
Their minds were in just as much danger as Somnia now.
Murmur dodged a Cirician claw as it closed over where her arm would have been moments before. She’d lost count of how many times she would have died to stupid mistakes if Snowy hadn’t pulled her out of the way of incoming doom.
Releasing Flux, she sidestepped, sending out a single target stun to prevent the thing she’d just avoided herself from happening to Sinister. Unsure exactly when it had happened, even Murmur was aware that her thoughts were drifting to her best friend much more often than they had before. There were feelings there, complex ones, ones she needed to sort out as soon as she had some time to think straight.
But for now, she needed to concentrate on making sure Sin stayed alive. None of them had died with new headsets yet. Given her own radically painful experience, Murmur was pretty sure they weren’t going to like it.
Infected Cirician soldiers were nigh unstoppable. It wasn’t that the raid couldn’t kill them, because they could, and they did by the hundreds. But there seemed to be no end to how many there were.
Comparatively, the number of Cirician webspinners they’d killed in the previous chamber seemed like a drop in the ocean. No wonder the queen had asked for help. They were probably getting slaughtered by their own infection-suffering brethren.
It wasn’t difficult to differentiate the infected creatures. Their movements were erratic, their limbs jolting every few seconds as they attempted to move instead of smoothly like those still free of sickness. The infected Ciricians fought with an abandon that bordered on obsessive. Like they had a need to kill. The thought made Murmur shiver.
Their attacks shot out in a mess of limbs that adjusted trajectory abruptly almost as if they were broken down robots feeding off their last dregs of power. On top of the sickly coloring, it lent the whole scene a macabre appearance.
Devlish’s tower shield was a godsend, and he wielded it as if it weighed nothing. He protected his healers, and some of his melee, depending on the abilities he faced. She was glad he was on their side. Esolan was a solid tank, and Rashlyn barely got hit, but neither of them were at Devlish’s level.
She watched Jirald out of the corner of her eye, not wanting him to know she was looking. While she’d set her nets to alarm her should he make moves toward her, it did little to assuage her need to stay on high alert around him. She could barely follow his blades with her eyes and often lost sight of them. Every time she saw him critically hit his targets she knew he really wanted to sink them into her. Her flight response wanted her to fly right out of there, and even though she knew there were heaps of people in between both her and the offending rogue, she desperately wanted to give into that reaction.
Reality or not, it would hurt if he tried to kill her in here. If what she’d gathered from skimming his emotions and thoughts, he didn’t just want to kill her twice. She shuddered, directing her attention back to the full raid, making sure that they all had their buffs and their enhancements.
They were on the third wave of infected since they’d begun to journey through the fortress on the way to find their next stopping point. The infected creatures didn’t stop. There was no reprieve for the raid to regenerate, to recoup any of their more serious injuries, or even to reconsider strategies. Waves of Ciricians just seemed to chain themselves together one after the other, throwing themselves at the raid as if doing so would eventually cancel the players out. Murmur knew all about zerging, but never from the monster’s point of view.
A yelp of pain rose up a few feet away from her, and Murmur turned to see Snowy limping, a bloody gash running down his left-hand side as he tried to remain upright. For a moment, Mur froze. Pain surged down their line of connection and pulled her out of her fright. She forgot everything else except to stun with Flux as she ran to where the wolf stumbled, catching him in her arms.
“Mur.” Sin’s voice was soft, right next to her. Another measure of comfort Murmur couldn’t put into words and she clung to the timber of that voice. “He’s fine. He’s already healing up. You need not let the tether affect you so much. You could have got hurt sprinting over here.”
“It’d heal too,” Murmur said absently. She was focused on the wound and how it was closing over, how his health bar was filling up, and how the pain through their connection faded away.
Several screams reached her ears, and she turned to see the rogue who’d been with Risk, Karn, and Jinna both receive a pincer to their arm, from different infected Ciricians.
“Shit.” She shouldn’t have run to her wolf. She should have stayed where shew was and prevented unnecessary mana usage through healing by stunning the crap out of those monsters over there.
Hindsight was a bitch. Murmur glanced around at her friends and allies, all fighting for all they were worth. The air thrummed with determination, adrenaline, and excitement. Her raid parties fought with renewed zeal, executing multiple
hidden abilities and digging their heals in.
She watched as the rangers used a mesmerizing wave of Jump Shots, alternating Rapid Fire and Quick Shots in what almost seemed like a dance.
Their armor as a whole was being caked in blood so much that she wasn’t sure if Merlin’s weird spell would have any influence over it. The sickly tinge to the color wasn’t helped by the stench of infection that threatened to overwhelm her. Pustulant wounds leaked from their opponents with every Back Stab of an assassin’s blade, with every axe swing executed by tank or melee. When mages and necromancers used DoTs and Direct Damage nukes to destroy hit points, the stinking mass of liquid barely concealed by the carapaces splattered everywhere.
Murmur wanted to call it a bloody battle, but the amount of retching she was narrowly avoiding made it more of a pus battle. Even with the disgusting elements though, Murmur could see teamwork shining through. How Karn worked well with Jinna, in harmony alternating their big hitting skills to help spread the agro. The way Dansyn combined with the other bards to work out who played what song at what interval.
And the healers worked wonderfully under Masha and Veranol’s directions.
For a few moments Murmur almost forgot that they weren’t all one guild. It seemed so cohesive, and so in control, but she knew it was fragile. The constant surreptitious glances that shot daggers from Risk’s eyes were enough to keep her from getting too big a head. He didn’t like that she led the raid, and she could tell that he hated the fact she’d been right so far. This alliance was fragile, and she couldn’t forget that. She added Risk to her list of people who might want to plant a dagger in her back.
When the third wave was done and the corpses looted for their meager crafting offerings, Murmur checked on Snowy. He was fine now, with not even a hint of his previous injury. She could sense the unease in the other eighteen people who weren’t in her guild. Even as much as they were used to fighting through every dungeon, the frequency of the infected Ciricians was more than anyone was used to.
