Distortion (Somnia Online Book 5)

by K. T. Hanna

  Devlish and Rashlyn were already engaging with the next wave of monsters, and Murmur concentrated on her usual routine. Stunning them, debuffing them. Doing everything she could in order to make sure her group’s damage taken was kept to a minimal amount.

  Sinister kept glancing at her, and Murmur knew her friend would want to talk, but right now she couldn’t figure out what it was she’d give as an answer, so she avoided the conversations completely.

  Fable stood in front of a large open cavern, glancing at the deep, dark water to which the ghosts had been barring the way. It was pretty and somehow seemed lonely. Murmur wanted to dive in and swim around so she could forget anything else right now.

  Snowy growled at the water, and Murmur decided diving in was a bad idea. Something in the middle blobbed up and down, large and slowly coming closer to them. But she didn’t gather any ill-intent from it. The thing was huge, towering halfway up to the vast ceiling by the time it stopped in front of the group.

  It wasn’t scary though, not to Murmur, though she could feel her friends’ anxiety levels rising all around her. She exerted a calming touch through her nets and watched as it visibly calmed their nerves. That made things much easier; she didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before.

  A burble emitted from the gigantic octopus. Murmur took a step closer, and Snowy went with her, his hackles down as he peered into the water. Reaching forward, she laid an open hand against the octopus’s head and felt herself immediately pulled into its mind.

  It was like falling into an abyss of darkness and pain. The only glimpses of light were the deaths of its tormentors. Memories of it being pushed to the brink, being forced through whips and chains, electricity and the withholding of its children, to dig into the lake, to find the treasure, the black gold they craved so much.

  And then, when it was in so much pain, when it was so enslaved, several of its children died. Torn by grief, it rebelled. It tore its harnesses, even the electrodes from its brain. Even now, some of them remained embedded, causing lumps to appear in the soft skin of its cranium. If she listened closely, she could hear its three hearts beating.

  Those who had forced it, those who had harmed it, were ghosts, much like those from the moleworms. There were others too, other octopi. They were a species called the octodieh. And this one, thanks to everything, was the last remaining adult. It had sealed the eggs that carried its young in a time bubble at the bottom of the sludge-filled lake, allowing for a constant stream of oxygen to keep them alive until it could be sure the ghosts of those who had tortured it didn’t return.

  Murmur pulled her awareness out with great difficulty. Her mind felt wiser and more adept at all things, like it could drink in all the knowledge in the world and make such a difference in it. Make people be kind, not suffer fools, and bring about wealth and prosperity to everything she touched.

  “Hey.” Havoc shook her arm, and she blinked as she looked at him. “You’re spacing out, Mur. Why are you petting a huge octopus?”

  “Oh. This is an octodieh. We have to save its children, who are locked in a time bubble at the bottom of this oil lake thing.” She smiled, like she’d just given him the world’s best answer, but he didn’t seem appeased and she couldn’t figure out why.

  “How did you?” But he paused and his eyes narrowed, his voice lowered to a whisper. “Did you just talk directly mind to mind with it? Because since when can you do that?”

  She blinked. He was right. A sensation of uneasiness began to creep through her stomach and she tried to think it away, but it remained there like a worm in a pile of compost. “I don’t know. I just felt like I could, so I tried, and now I know what the quest is.”

  As if on cue, bold golden letters spread above them, just as faint whispers of power, and the voices of the long dead began to drift into the cavern. To either side of them, at both the entrances and the exits, swarmed a horde of ghosts again.

  Free the octodieh eggs and assist the species to achieve its revenge on those who enslaved and wronged them. Caution is necessary. It is possible to drown in oil.

  “Oh great.” Sinister glanced down at her robes. “Damn it. That damned cleanse spell better work for this shit, else Neva will be furious.”

  Summers Residence

  Home of Laria, David, and Wren

  Day Twenty-Two

  Laria counted to ten in her head before she bent back over her work. The key to making sure the headsets didn’t pull all of the kids wearing them into a coma, was to make sure she only tweaked the deeper interface about half as much as it had been.

  While that sounded simple, it wasn’t. It constantly wanted to turn past the fifty percent phase, and as her and Shayla had discussed at length, it wasn’t good enough. It had to be fifty or less. Now if she could get it to err on the side of forty-eight percent, that would be fine.

  Wren’s fingers had always been defter at this, but she wasn’t exactly useful for that right now. Laria refused to let herself dwell on that. Getting these headsets ready, getting them to the others who played with her daughter was paramount, and completing most of it here kept it out of the way of James’s prying eyes. He was cold and calculating, that one.

  She’d already made sure her own security system was on a higher level of surveillance and made sure not to talk out loud so as to avoid anything accidentally being picked up by prying eyes she missed. It was tedious work.

  But work she had to do. Three headsets down and two to go, including the one she was currently tinkering with. Laria squared her shoulders and tried again, leveraging the tiny wires in the direction she needed so she could solder the extra connections Wren’s had.

  David walked into her office. She could hear the soft steps he took, even though he tried not to disturb her. He also had a specific smell about him, one that always put her at ease, and truthfully, she needed it right then. His gentle presence was always welcome, always comforting.

  “Thanks,” she murmured, her zeal renewed.

  “How’s it going?” he asked, taking a seat next to her by slowly perching on one of her other chairs. He was careful not to get in the light she so desperately needed.

  “About as well as you’d expect,” she muttered, knowing he wouldn’t take offense. They were used to each other after so many years. “But it needs to be done. So much needs to be done.”

  “One step at a time.”

  She knew he was there, restraining any type of physical gesture of comfort, because he knew to do so right now could ruin hours of work. Laria was grateful. Having found David so many years ago in a virtual world that was now archaic, she’d never have guessed how perfect her life would be. Well, at least until her daughter put on a headset tweaked by an evil genius and fell into a coma.

  Overall though, they were lucky. She felt lucky. “Thanks, David.”

  She could feel his smile even though she didn’t take her eyes off her target; she couldn’t afford to. But it didn’t mean he was upset. He’d come in to let her know he was there, should she need him for anything. When all she wanted to do was just relax and curl up and get lost in a movie while snuggling with her favorite human being, Laria dug her heels in and put her head to work.

  The sooner she got this, the sooner she could have her relaxation.

  The ghosts weren’t the same pale translucent color the others had been. These ones appeared more solid, sort of like zombies more than ghosts, but Murmur wasn’t about to argue. “Are they undead, Havoc?”

  “Definitely. Lots of fun for those ones. I can probably wrest command of a few of them and turn them on each other. Should be fun.” He grinned, and the expression met his eyes. Murmur was glad she wasn’t one of the zombies.

  But they didn’t move like the shambling horror stories she’d been told as a kid. They were faster. Not like zombies on crack fast, but they moved with an agility she didn’t expect from the livi
ng dead. The octodieh shuddered next to her, its tentacles shivering down into the oil-filled water.

  She could almost hear it asking her to help it, to help her species survive. Surely if they didn’t, the species wouldn’t be available in Somnia anymore.

  You are correct. The world is designed to operate organically. Should something die out, then it will not be repopulated. As you’ve seen, these quests take different turns depending on your approach to them. You aren’t fighting what would usually be considered a monster because of your actions involved in avoiding the monster that guarded this place.

  It made more sense now. They’d accessed a different quest line. She wondered how many different quest lines were possible. Would there ever come a time when the same version of a dungeon was triggered by someone else?

  Probably.

  Murmur rolled her eyes, preparing for the onslaught of zombies, and concentrated on her skills. She prepared a stun, centering it on the third row of zombies, her most potent one. Upon release, it separated the zombies into two groups enabling the raid to engage the first wave of them.

  Her target still in her sights, she cast Mass Enthrall. Luckily, Concussive Blast had a twelve second stun timer, give or take a couple. She caught most of those who were stunned in her AoE Enthrall, allowing for them to be frozen in place while the remaining tide clashed with the raid.

  Only three of those she attempted to Enthrall resisted, and they headed right into the fray toward her, their dead eyes focused on her as much as they could in that state. Murmur shivered but readied her arsenal. Stuns and enthralls, debuffs and buffs. If only she could AoE some of these debuffs, she’d feel a lot better.

  “These are easier to cut down.” Rashlyn sounded confused as one of her Hundred Fists decimated one of her opponents.

  “They do have solid…bits,” Mellow offered, like they’d swallowed something that tasted bad. “I’m not fond of the rotting flesh odor. Anyone else?”

  “Right there with you.” Sinister scowled as she drew their life essence toward her, sucking some of it into a huge ball which was destined to be one of her blood grenades. “Oddly enough, they do bleed. Sluggishly, sometimes congealing, but hey, it’s blood, and I’m not picky if it means I can heal easier.”

  Murmur refreshed her Mez as the others fell quiet, their concentration on the mass of undead attacking them. Havoc was in his element. He was weaving his hands in a spell she’d not seen him cast to her memory. Suddenly, about thirteen of the walking corpses shrieked in agony as they began to mold in front of her eyes.

  Their skin melted into each other, bones cracking and forming into a monstrous skeleton. The skin stretched, and some of it ripped, and finally, the construct stood before them. Havoc’s eyes gleamed in the low light of the cavern, and the octodieh stopped shaking.

  Murmur could almost hear its satisfaction at what it expected to come next. The huge beast reminded her of a golem, but one constructed out of zombie bits and willing to do Havoc’s bidding. It roared, and a foul stench filled the air, but as it began to move, sending the ground under them rumbling. Its long arms sought out any and all zombies it could reach and tossed them into the oil water.

  What’s more, those on the left-hand side of it ended up in its fists, squashed beyond salvation. Its eyes were made out of multiple eyes from the zombies it consisted of, and limbs weren’t a strong point either. But they worked. They were monstrous and mighty, and crushed everything they touched.

  Sinister stood up straight, her hands momentarily still as all eyes turned on the construct. Instead of facing the rest of the guild, the zombies turned to throw themselves onto it instead. It fought valiantly, ripping bodies apart, heads from torsos, and throwing some into the water. The others it either crushed or fed to its body, making it grow larger, more formidable.

  Leeroy hovered near it, guarding it with intensity. Anything that tried to approach it from a way it wasn’t facing was dispatched swiftly by several strokes of Leeroy’s scythe.

  More and more the zombies swarmed out of the tunnels, and the construct grew ever larger, the bodies within it writhing now, surging to devour other corpses.

  “And why haven’t you used this before now?” Merlin leaned over cordially and asked with an edge to his voice. “Like you know, when I was impaled against a wall, and we were still being attacked?”

  Havoc shrugged, and Murmur could see the strain he was under to control the monstrosity he’d made. The veins in his neck were standing out, straining against his skin. “Didn’t have the spell then. Hard to control.”

  Merlin peered a little closer and a soft gasp escaped him. “Shit. That doesn’t look like fun.”

  Murmur tapped him on the arm, unused to having nothing to do with her hands, but this fight was Havoc’s. All she could do was funnel him mana and hope the beast took care of their adversaries.

  She noticed as it moved that there was zombie flesh trailing behind it, and she suddenly realized that it didn’t just devour each zombie, it used up the creature’s energy in order to maintain its form. Once the reanimation energy was sucked out of it, it needed to replenish its power so it didn’t burn out. It basically got rid of that extra weight as it moved.

  The experience, as she looked at it, was remarkable. “We need to use this thing more often.”

  “Not worth it.” Havoc managed to get out between clenched teeth. “Requires too many bodies to maintain for any amount of time.”

  He had a good point.

  Suddenly, the creature ran out of dead bodies to devour, and Murmur watched as it swung around, its jaws already beginning to break apart as it tried to find some more sustenance. Slowly it began to crumble. Rotting limbs and congealed blood tumbled to the ground, quickly turning into a slushy pile of goo.

  Behind them the octodieh splashed loudly in the water, flailing with its limbs like there was urgent need for them. Turning around, Murmur gasped in shock.

  Rising from the oiled water was a thick bubble. Inside, she could see a tall, robust being holding onto a smaller bubble, one that seemed to hold small eggs: the octodieh’s. The adult octodieh opened its mouth and split the air with an ear-piercing shriek, but the man holding the eggs captive just smiled.

  The expression was cold and calculated, ready to do whatever he must. He wore tailored clothes, and his fine beige fur was visible on his arms and face only. But the eyes gave away just how evil he really was. One of the Eiriarpth, he only vaguely resembled them, but his eyes held secret and pain he’d inflicted on so many beings. He wanted to hurt things, wanted to end things.

  All Murmur wanted to do was stop him.

  As he broke the surface completely, the top of the bubble began to open to reveal the individual. A piece of ground rose up as well. He scowled out at them and placed the little egg holder delicately in the center of that piece of ground.

  “Well. I do believe you owe me three lives. You killed my best three servants. Dizzi, Prizzi, and Drizzpt. That was harshly cruel what you did to them, you know.” He didn’t leave room for an argument, but left the statement hanging in the air.

  Murmur skin crawled, but not at his words, at the implications. It had been cruel hadn’t it? What on earth had gotten into her? She needed to sit herself down and figure out a few things. Or she was never going to get any peace.

  “Your Eiriarpths don’t have the best reputation.” Dev spoke up, his voice clear and confident. Mur was glad he felt that way, because hers seemed to be sapping out through cracks. “And we have no idea who you think you are.”

  It was the right thing to say, although in some views it might have been the wrong thing. The tall Eiriarpth on his little island frowned and the fur around his eyes grew darker. “Very well. I see that some time has passed. I am Clezdil. I am the King of the Eiriarpth, and you will pay for their deaths!”

  Before Murmur could ward him, Beastial stepped forwar
d and flung his axe at the king. It flew in a perfect arc and looked like it was going to go straight for the jugular. Beastial even began to smile as it flew through the air. “Pay for everything you killed on the way you…”

  But he didn’t get any further. Murmur wished she’d have spoken up before he flung it, because Clezdil’s thoughts were leaking everywhere. He had so much more power than he’d exhibited thus far, and he was able to use without limitation. Everything in his mind warned her against confrontation, but she knew as well as the rest of them that they wouldn’t have a choice.

  Especially when the axe ricocheted off the bubble that appeared at the exact impact point and boomeranged back to hit Beastial.

  Shir-Khan’s growl echoed through the huge chamber as Beastial screamed in pain. Luckily his cat had been quick enough to push him mostly out of the way, so he avoided complete decapitation. Still, the cut to his scalp was bleeding profusely, bright red drops dripping to stain the ground.

  “My, my. You shouldn’t attack first. You know nothing about me. For all you know, I could be immune to your attacks.” He looked at his fingernails, as if finding hangnails was more important than paying attention to his would-be attackers.

  Murmur narrowed her eyes, tapping into her abilities and willing them to hear what he thought, to find out what he was. He didn’t seem to notice the push of her sensor nets as she delicately attempted to filter his thoughts. So she proceeded, pulling from that place inside her that didn’t have her usual boundaries, the one that was daring enough to calm her friends down and angry enough to torture those damned Eiriarpths who’d chosen to defile innocent creatures for their own gain.

  No. This was better for everyone. To know this being’s thoughts, to be able to preempt what he could and would do, and maybe she could destroy him from the inside out. Make his brain boil.

  She shook her head, trying to clear the thoughts out of it. That wasn’t how she played. What the hell was wrong with her mind right now?