by K. T. Hanna
She couldn’t blame him. But if it came to that, they’d have to. They had to get in there and kill shit. Preferably five minutes ago.
Brevint also had a fountain. Gnomes hard at work mining on one side, and on the other they tinkered with all sorts of gems and tools. Water shot out of them like cascades of rainbows as they reflected off the crystal rock. She yearned to match this fountain to its puzzle.
The shopkeepers gathered around the large fountain began to pack up as she stood there, and she hurried over to the potion set up to scan their wares.
“Lookin for anything in particular?” The gnome asked. He had white hair that stuck out in all directions, and his large nose was positively rosy. Murmur resisted the urge to hug the shopkeeper.
“I’m just looking for unusual potions and draughts. That’s all.” She couldn’t see any among his offerings.
“Just packed those right up. Here.” He reached into one of the bags he had slung over what appeared to be a very patient donkey and pulled out a small bag filled with vials. “Any o’ these take your fancy?”
Murmur looked over them. She couldn’t immediately tell what they were without inspecting them. She had a sudden inkling that it might not be the best to try out new concoctions when they were on a time crunch. She shook her head. “Thank you anyway.”
He smiled at her, his merry blue eyes twinkling. “You’re very welcome.”
Once everyone had a brief look around the little trade center, and they all mounted up again and exited the town. The path into the mountains wasn’t easy to follow. It was nothing like the road that led to the city. Narrow, they could only go single file, and some of the mounts had difficulty with the footing. It made Murmur even more glad that her mount happened to be a floating disc. Win-win.
The moons were higher in the sky now. Both full, which Murmur hadn’t seen in a while. They left a serene glow that cast itself over the crystal rock and the evergreens that dotted the landscape. It lit up their path more than she’d anticipated and made hunting through the night not feel as dark and dangerous.
As soon as she had the thought, she regretted it though. Because right then the ground chose to rumble. She groaned. It rumbled, and small rocks skittered down from above them and beneath them, sailing down the path to plonk onto the actual road far below.
Murmur sighed and dismounted as she noticed the road was distending. Three massive skeletons pushed sharp and bony hands through the ground. They clambered out of the holes and onto the path so fast, no one could get into place for a shot before they’d done so.
One of them lifted its hands to its chest and beat out a primal scream. Age old helmets adorned their bony heads, and armor hung off them in rotting rags.
Murmur Mez’d the two on the outside, leaving the one in the middle to rush Devlish. It did, too. Fast as lightning, so that Dev barely got his shield raised in time to defend himself. Murmur thanked her foresight for having locked the other two down before they could move. Because if they were this fast, she would have had much difficulty aiming.
The skeleton took very little damage from arrows. Which was only natural because he had no flesh for them to sink into. Mellow threw an acid bomb at it, and the roar repeated, this time with pain suffused through the emotion. Rashlyn and Beastial were more successful than the rangers as well. Fists and kicks could at least dislodge bones and make for dislocation. But funnily enough, the skeleton could easily grab a bone and lock it back into place.
The first time it did this, Murmur gagged. If that had been human, the crunch would have been sickening. Havoc muttered under his breath. The words felt dark and dangerous. Even as he released the pattern his fingers created, the rot he’d cast began to eat at the ground in front of them and into the skeleton from below. His bones began to get dark spots and splinter away where they resided. It climbed slowly, so slow at first that the skeleton they were whittling down didn’t at first notice. But as it gained altitude, the rot also gained momentum.
“To the ground where ye belong.” Havoc’s eyes shone with a fiery purpose, like he put the living dead back into the ground all the time.
The first skeleton began to crumple in on itself, as the rot ate away at the bone. With nothing left to tie it together, it finally collapsed into a half dusty heap on the ground, essentially back to where it came from.
“Holy hell, what the fuck was that?” Murmur muttered as she began the debuff process on the next skeleton.
Havoc smiled tightly. “It’s a special undead rot spell. I can only use it once every five minutes, so I’ll let you know when, and I can’t use it on any undead except skeletons. If they’re close enough to each other, the rot will spread, but that’s about the max of damage it can do.”
Murmur nodded. They hadn’t fought many skeletons recently. Inundated by zombies perhaps, but not skeletons. She wondered if that was going to change in this next dungeon. She was already getting excited to move in and kill some more shit. Forty-eight was getting so close. Which reminded her to consider contacting Spiral as well.
She looked up to see the last skeleton break her damned Mez. And it most definitely wasn’t happy with the person who’d put it in that stasis. It rounded on Murmur with a roar. Lucky for her they tended to be vocal when attacking or she’d have lost more experience than they were about to gain.
At the last second, she rolled out of the way, and it’s long, sharp fingers only scraped a gash in her leg. Murmur stifled the scream of pain, realizing belatedly that the pain wasn’t as bad as she remembered it now. Perhaps since she wasn’t caught in the game, her settings were now what they should have been.
Correct. For the most part.
But I can still talk to you. Murmur was a little confused, and perhaps a bit scared.
You will always be able to talk to me. I am now a part of you.
Which was scary enough in and of itself, but if she added Michael’s brain shard virus into the mix, it meant that she could essentially be affected too. Not only was the world they’d come to love, the world that was coming alive before them in danger? But so was she. Self-preservation and all.
Merlin had rooted the stupid skeleton, but its gaze wouldn’t waver from Murmur.
“Skill is up. Drag them closer if you can.”
Exbo pulled out a strange looking arrow, with a loop at the end. He fired it clear through the body, and it looked like he’d missed, but it looped around, pulling a compact rope around and returned to him like a boomerang, pulling the skeleton in the process.
Murmur made a note of that skill in her head too. Not quite as effective as Devlish’s Lariat, but good in a pinch. “Level forty-five?”
He nodded, a small smile creeping onto his face.
Havoc released the rot, and even though the group still needed to defend against the skeletons as they disintegrated, the rot made them feeble. She shuddered at the thought that maybe something had a spell that would do that to players.
The fortress didn’t seem like one. The entrance was nothing like any of the dungeons they’d been in before. It was mostly hidden from outside view, disguised as a mine. Standing outside the almost sheer cliff face, Murmur looked up, craning her neck. She thought she could see windows or cutouts in the rock up further, but couldn’t be certain. Sometimes she wished Snowy was a bird.
He ruffed indignantly.
The only entrance they could see was a rickety mine door.
“Guess that’s it?” Merlin commented dubiously as he ducked slightly to get in the door. “Come on, don’t let me die alone.”
Murmur sighed. She was going to have to duck a lot. She could see that already. Except when she stepped through the entrance, she was confronted with higher ceilings than she’d imagined. At least several feet taller than herself.
Though that took her attention at first, several feet further into the mine she glimpsed small, gleaming gn
omes. Their skin was almost as crystalline as the rocks they were mining, and their faces housed teeth so sharp, she was sure they could rip the skin from an animal. But they were lower level. In the higher thirties. They’d yield little to no experience, but since they were so close in level, they’d have a decent aggro range.
Even as their footsteps echoed on the ground, they began to turn their heads. For a moment it seemed more like they were mechanical, at least, until the one closest to them let out a menacing scream and launched itself at them, mouth wide open.
Murmur reassessed her initial impression. Those teeth would kill anything. Beastial side stepped the incoming gnome launcher, only to be confronted by an entire group of the little buggers as they closed ranks around their raid. Despite their level discrepancy, it was daunting being dogpiled by angry, vicious crystal gnomes.
Murmur backed away, behind Devlish who took the brunt of the initial onslaught on his shield.
“Mur?” Dev asked, and she could hear his patience fraying.
She collected herself. “AoE it is then.”
Once she got a handle on it, her AoEs did the trick. But those first several seconds had been overwhelming. Low level or not, more than a dozen mobs could have inflicted serious damage. They mowed through the gnomes in no time flat. Due to her higher level, none of the little single gnomes resisted her stuns. Which was a shame since she wanted to try out Veto really badly. But it could wait. Following the path through the dungeon right up to what appeared to be an elevator. Murmur eyed it dubiously.
“Guess we’re supposed to go up in this?” Havoc ventured.
It was made of rickety wood all the way up to the pully that creaked before anyone even set foot in it. Murmur gulped at the thought of putting twelve people inside. It wasn’t the most confidence inspiring contraption.
They rode up one group at a time instead.
Once up the top there was a large antechamber. It would easily house a full raid of people. Murmur wondered if entering with a full raid upped the quality of loot, or perhaps even the monster difficulty, or if it triggered some other type of thing.
Staging area. That’s what this was. The actual dungeon had to be just beyond the almost hidden stone doors in front of her. Except they were obviously supposed to be stone doors that she couldn’t see, unless you knew about them. The crack was minuscule, and they appeared huge and heavy.
“Okay. Eat up, buff up, and go bio,” Being in that capsule had at least made her need for bio breaks non-existent. “Might want to grab some real world food too. “We go in ten minutes.”
It was amazing what one could get accomplished in such a short time. Murmur appreciated just how easy they’d made it to take a bio break, and she went downstairs to grab an apple and granola bar.
By the time the ten minutes was over, everyone was done, and everyone was buffed.
Havoc looked around, his gaze wavering between two wrought iron torches.
“You really think it’s one of those?” Sinister asked, an incredulous expression on her face.
The necromancer shrugged. “Probably. Can’t see anything else that could be a lever to trigger the closed doors.”
Devlish pushed his way forward and took a deep breath. “Come on, guys. Let’s get this rodeo done!”
Murmur smiled, and Devlish activated the torch on the left.
It pulled forward ever so slightly, and a huge clunk sounded from within what appeared to be secure stone walls. And then, ever so slowly, the massive chunks of stone moved apart to reveal a dimly lit hallway. The air that greeted them was musty and filled with dust. And of course, the inevitable blood curdling scream.
Storm Entertainment
Somnia Online Division
Game Development Offices - Artificial Intelligence Servers
Late Day Twenty-Two
Laria stared at the codes in front of her eyes, willing herself to understand exactly what it was she was looking at. She was tired after having worked on the headsets nonstop, but those were done and this here, it wasn’t. It needed to be, and as soon as possible. But her energy was flagging.
Numbers and equations swirled in front of her eyes. Coding language that usually sounded like its own opera to her was distorted into a discordant melody. It was all almost perfect. If someone had just been glancing at it, they probably wouldn’t have noticed the wrongness about it. Unless you knew to look closer, it all appeared to be normal.
Hell, she’d probably even glanced over this multiple times herself and just accepted it as valid because nothing immediately stood out to her.
It was devilishly clever. Taking the original coding and subtly altering it in a way that would be difficult to detect unless the person was explicitly looking for it. Coding was like that.
This wrong code though, it wasn’t a mistake by some random person. It was working perfectly as its creator had intended. Constantly pulling power from everything around it, subverting the original intentions of the game in a slow and gradual way. No, this mistake had been entered deliberately so that the system itself wouldn’t even notice until it was too late. Genius really.
It wasn’t quite finished, though. If Sui had never exhibited signs of contamination, and if Riasli hadn’t gone rogue, they’d likely never have caught it until it was too late. But it hadn’t finished its infiltration, and that might even be due to Wren’s unexpected connection.
Laria shivered and hunched over again. It all came back to her daughter’s blasted connection to the game. In a way, Michael had stumped himself by making that headset. With the little bit of time the interference brought them, she might even be able to figure it out. There had to be a way of combatting it, and if Wren’s headset was key to having slowed it, it might also be an answer to how to undo it.
She pulled up the schematics for her daughter’s headset and began to go over them.
Knowing Shayla was worried too only fueled Laria more. James lingering about wasn’t helping. She thought they’d gotten rid of him, but he had clout. After his undercover mission fell apart, he’d given up all pretense, and now he remained as a representative of his actual employers. Considering they were technically business partners in the whole headset venture, him being there was normal. But it was also dangerous.
Laria didn’t mind the danger now. This whole ordeal had changed her perspectives, and now she wished she had never asked Michael for help. Had what she’d done opened the way for him to do this?
But if that had always been his plan, and if James was so set on getting his hands on this secret? Then bring it on. Laria wasn’t about to give in.
Her main concern was time. Slowly the virus was spreading through the system, regardless of how it was being held at bay. She didn’t have the time to spend on subverting it that she ideally needed.
“Laria?” Shayla’s voice interrupted her thoughts and made Laria jump sky high.
“Shit, woman. Knock,” Laria snapped, but it didn’t come out right, considering how tired she was. She just sounded mildly disgruntled.
“I did. You were a little engrossed.” Shayla paused and leaned against the desk, lowering her voice as she spoke. “You know that’s how he’ll find out, right? We have to be careful. Put a damned bell on your door or something.”
Laria laughed, picturing James with a cat bell collar. The imagery did nicely to cheer her up. “Will do, boss.”
“Shut it. How’s it coming?” She gestured in front of Laria’s eyes. Not that Shayla could see the projection solely for her eyes, but she would have known it was there.
“Slow but sure. Not as fast as we need or as I’d like.” Laria put her head on the table, closing her eyes, able to see the scattered pattern of coding on the insides of her eyelids. “We’ve got to get this. I might have to get David to help.”
Shayla nodded. “Do you think he can decipher it?”
Laria shrugged, her voice muffled a bit by the table. “Maybe. Maybe not. But right now, I can’t be choosey. I don’t have many choices, and we don’t have time.”
She finally sat back up and stretched, trying to chase away the fog that threatened to engulf her mind. “What about the stability? Headset, game? Got them going?”
This time Shayla shrugged and finally just flopped down on the floor. “The headsets are the easy part. At least once now we’ve identified what made the system freak out when it encountered Wren. We can’t reverse its connection to her either, but she will be able to remain outside the game if it all goes south.”
“That’s comforting.” Laria’s sarcasm felt raw even in her own throat. “Sorry. Just a little testy today.”
“Just today?” Shayla grinned and ducked out of the way as if expecting her friend to bonk her on the head. But Laria was too tired. Her friend sobered up and continued talking. “The game…it’s nothing anyone will really notice. We’ve probably got a few days before it begins deteriorating more, or enough that others see it inside or out of the game. It’ll be more noticeable inside at first.”
“That doesn’t help me at all. How is the game holding up?” Laria intoned each word separately, trying to get her thoughts across.
“Oh. I think it’s actually developing much like the AIs. Speaking of which. Let’s figure out that bloody code so we can fix the game and rescue Rav.” Shayla pushed herself up, and Laria scowled at her.
“Thanks for that. Because I was just twiddling my thumbs.” Laria got back to work, trying to make more sense of the damned formula in front of her. Just before Shayla left the room, Laria called out.
“Hey. Just so we’re on the same page.” She paused as Shayla nodded. “If Sui doesn’t make it back from this hell, I’m fine with that. We’ll just have to figure out a way to make the game operate on two AIs.”
