Dissonance

by K. T. Hanna

  Devlish led the way as they walked down the next set of stairs. The carpet was so old in places that it was slick and slipperier than had it been the original stone that lay underneath. They picked their way down very carefully only to stop short, spaced out across the fourteen steps they’d been going down.

  A soft chittering reached their ears, and Murmur gulped involuntarily. Surely, she hadn’t heard that right. But it repeated, and this time in crescendo. Without even needing to look, she knew what they were about to face, and worst of all, she was quite certain where they were located.

  She gripped Snowy’s fur with her fingers, knowing that all along he’d been sensing this and she’d just put it down to the usual worries they had. While she knew it wasn’t a boss, she also realized this was probably just the precursor to one.

  “I really don’t want to look up, do I?” Devlish had grown as pale as a lacerta could, and it was all Murmur could do to nod in his direction. And even though everyone looked at him, imploring him not to do so, Devlish slowly looked up.

  Murmur couldn’t resist, almost like it was a compulsion, and she knew it couldn’t be because her shields were tight around herself and her raid. Above them, spread out like the bees of a hive—crawling on each other, over each other, hanging everywhere—were so many Buntu, she couldn’t even begin to count them.

  At that moment the chittering stopped, and the entire group above them descended at once.

  Reflexively, Murmur stunned them, but resist messages spammed her vision, and she knew a heap of them had resisted. Regardless, she stunned them again, the AOE spell hitting the spiders and sending sparks flying through the air.

  It was their first real area of effect challenge, where cleave was going to matter, and for one moment she panicked, not sure that they had enough damage. At least until Leeroy flew into the middle with her, and swept around with its scythe.

  Beastial let out a yell at the same time, activating some ability that had both him and Shir’Khan glowing red. The rangers loosed Rain of Arrows, and Murmur kept her stun up, thankful that she’d received Concussive Blast in her last set of spells. While the spider babies seemed highly resistant, they definitely weren’t resisting it every time.

  Stunning them in place helped the group mow down their health with area of effect spells, without having all of the little devils trying to cast or hit them with disorientation at once. It wasn’t perfect, but it was working.

  In the meantime, both Sinister and Veranol used their own AoE heals, making sure to top people off between stuns.

  The hallway wasn’t exactly narrow, but they could only stand four abreast, so it was quite squishy and crowded in the area. Not to mention still navigating the stairwell. Finally, the monsters stopped jumping down from whatever cavern they lived in above the area, and Murmur began to heave a sigh of relief as they decimated the last of them.

  She finally let up on her stun, and looked down at where they all stood ankle deep in spider baby corpses. The eerily human appendages were shredded, and the spider eyes gazed up blankly, making Sinister gag beside her.

  “Well. That was a surprise.” Devlish wiped his axes against his pants, leaving smears of almost black blood down the sides. “Was not expecting that.”

  Sinister poked them with her toe and shuddered at the squishy noise it made, the eyes jangling like marbles in a glass. “A creepy and disgusting surprise. Good thing we have stuns.”

  “Yesssss, a very good thing.” The words were hissed out, like an exaggerated snake might speak.

  “Very funny, Beast,” Murmur muttered as she continued to survey the carnage.

  Beastial poked her in the arm, confusion in his expression. “What was funny? That wasn’t me speaking.”

  Murmur turned slowly, taking in all her friends’ faces which reflected the fear beginning to grow in her gut.

  “If it wasn’t any of you, what was it?” She gulped the words out, really hoping that one of them was pulling a huge prank on the rest of them. Because of course, in the middle of the dungeon was the perfect spot to do this.

  “No...” Havoc looked around, his dark eyes wide, and his pet hovered by his side, scythe in a ready position.

  Snowy began to growl low in his throat, tugging at Murmur’s tunic as he did so. Looking down at him, she met his eyes and watched as he deliberately raised them toward the ceiling. Murmur really didn’t want to look up again, but she knew she had to.

  Almost in unison, the entire group raised their eyes to the ceiling only to find a nightmare awaiting them.

  Its human torso was twisted and disfigured, the eight fingers tapping out a very gentle beat. It sat on top of the arachnid’s middle section, and its eight feet stuck to the wall and into the cavernous opening above them like it was perfectly balanced and waiting to pounce.

  Somnia Online

  Curet - Tree-Top Overview

  Day Sixteen

  Emilarth sat on her balcony, if it could be called that, and looked out over her jungle. She should probably thank Belius at some stage for being so stubborn and taking her locus race away from her. It seemed she was definitely partial to cats.

  But she’d been complacent, and couldn’t help kick herself for it. Her inability to have the foresight required for an incident like this, had inevitably put her people at risk. Her beautiful, developing cat-people.

  Closing her eyes again, she dived deep into the awareness of the ruins. There were strands of pain that flailed around, having been broken by whatever Riasli did. It’d be perfect if she could actually pinpoint what the meddling enchanter had done, but that was more difficult than she liked to admit. Even as the overseer of that zone, as the one responsible for the way it worked, Emilarth had to admit that Riasli had undermined it in such a way that it had taken the AI by complete surprise.

  Her guardians remained somewhat tarnished by what had occurred, unable to reconcile their duty with what they’d done. Replacing them wasn’t an option Emilarth wanted to contemplate. They’d already evolved so much, become more than they were ever intended to be, than any of them were intended to be. Instead, she pushed at them with an overall soothing ability meant to take the edge off the pain they were feeling, that they didn’t understand. Pain was a part of growth, a part she was slowly learning through her own experience. Adaptation was one of the most admirable human traits, even if it could take a dark turn sometimes.

  “You could just replace them.” Belius voice sounded from behind, like he’d hoped to surprise her with his stealthiness.

  He hadn’t though. Nothing could land in this jungle any longer without alerting her. And she’d only needed one rogue AI to implement it. Her own sarcasm bit at her and she suppressed a sigh. “No replacing here. If something is broken, I will help fix it. I’m not you.”

  Her words were cold, irritated, and genuinely impatient with her brother and the way he twisted things so she couldn’t even play her manipulation games anymore. Now she actually had to try being serious. It was mostly his fault that their world required true supervision. Sort of. His and Michael’s, and the thirst Sui had to absorb the former scientist.

  “I don’t replace things that frequently.” He actually sounded a bit wounded, like he’d really taken her words to heart.

  Emilarth didn’t believe him for a second. “Every being we place here, every single new fledgling AI we insert into this world, has the potential to become an organic part of what we’ve created. We all have the possibility to become sentient. Killing them off, or brushing them off will do more harm than good in the long run. Better to fix things before they break than to throw them away when they do.”

  “You’re getting all philosophical,” he chided, taking a seat next to her.

  She glanced over, somewhat surprised to see he was in his rogue persona and not the enchanter. So, she was talking to the Sidius incarnation of Sui. She narrowed her
eyebrows and looked him up and down. “You’re going to go and visit him, aren’t you?”

  Sidius shrugged his shoulders. “Not yet. Exodus are in a dungeon right now. I’m just biding my time until they’re done. Got fairly interesting there for a while when Spiral showed up on the scene.”

  “Biding your time for what?” She ignored his mention of the other guild that was barreling to the top in Somnia. There was enough on her plate with just two of them.

  Sidius eyed her thoughtfully, barely visible beneath the hood he wore. It was odd to see Sui in a human form instead of the locus, and for just a second, she wanted to scream at him that if he was going to galivant around as a human, he should have left her race to her. But she didn’t, it wasn’t worth it, not with the web of protection she was trying to spin over her domain. She only trusted herself now, at least fully. Neither of the others needed to know what she was doing, and his presence with her wasn’t welcome.

  “I have a point to prove, and since I can’t just go and slaughter the NPCs myself and gain what I want since it won’t drop for me if I do, I must send out players to retrieve what I need. So, I’m biding my time until he gets me what I asked for.” There was a hint of anger at the end of the small speech, hidden under the gathering of words.

  Because Murmur won’t go and get it for you, Emilarth thought but didn’t say out loud. Instead, she turned back to her scrying and reached out over the ruins, shielding both herself and her constructs in the process. “If that’s your endgame, brother, you don’t need to come and tell me. I already know. Just be careful you don’t break something in the process.”

  It was an obvious dismissal, and Sui huffed under his breath and vanished.

  Emilarth sighed and gave her full attention back to her village. She still had to check on the dark elves, and the gnomes, and weave her magic over their cities too. If nothing else, they deserved the protection she could provide them with, and if anything else happened to the cities she oversaw like it had to the Ruins of Cenedril, Emilarth would know immediately.

  Somnia Online

  Richnai Fortress - Firtulai Continent

  Boss Battle - Erichu

  Day Sixteen

  Jirald howled in pain, and Masha reacted instinctively, casting out his strong instant heal to make sure the rogue didn’t go down. They couldn’t afford for him to die yet—or at all. He was taking the least damage and doing the most by far. Whatever bee Karn had placed in his pants seemed to have worked. Jirald was playing better than he had during their entire time in Somnia, and for that, Masha was grateful.

  But Erichu was nothing like any of them had expected. Making their way through hundreds of gnomes, and several mini bosses, Exodus had worked their way through the quests, through the story line and up into the heights of the mountain-carved fortress. How they’d hewn these majestic rooms out of rock, Masha hadn’t a clue. The one thing he did know was that when they arrived at what appeared to be the throne room, there was no gnome baron or king. There was only Erichu.

  He stood about ten feet tall, and his body was as thick as three bears put together, with arms as wide as tree trunks. He lumbered like a gorilla with those powerful arms pushing him around to the point that he was far more agile than he’d first appeared.

  Erichu roared with his misshapen face that was a mash of gorilla, gnome, and something Masha couldn’t define and for the briefest moment, he didn’t want to kill the beast. But the feeling passed as soon as it smashed one of their DPS across the room and into the stone wall to crumple in a heap at the base of it. Mobs in this game seemed set on batting enemies into walls.

  Masha’s attention turned back to the beast, his momentary reflection dismissed as Jirald roared of his own accord and got back into the battle. Whittling down Erichu’s health proved hazardous and difficult. The hide that covered him was thick and leathery and difficult to cut through, but at all times he seemed to hunch forward, protecting his chest and abdomen with deliberate care.

  Which only meant it was a weak point, and as sorry as he felt for the creature, Masha knew how to exploit weaknesses. If they wanted to get anywhere in this game, and rank anywhere near the top, they needed to push down any feelings of pity they had for the algorithms they fought.

  After having watched Erichu repeat the same leap forward and pummeling process a couple of times, Masha got ready to direct the rogues and their two berserkers to circle the beast and approach it from the back when it went wild with its arms.

  But this time it didn’t follow the previous pattern. It knew they were coming. With another ground shaking roar, it beat on its chest first and them leveraged both arms out to the side in the precise opposite action of the earlier attacks.

  Doing so enabled Erichu to catch the melee DPS with a direct hit because they’d assumed it would attack the same way it did before and ducked underneath what they thought would be a wide sweep. Instead, its arms struck two at a time, and that’s how they got Jirald howling in pain, with the other melee DPS not much better off. What worked on most damned mobs seemed not to work on this one. Masha scowled. Be damned with logic if it wasn’t going to work. They were on their own and had to keep going.

  With Erichu down to eighty percent, Masha knew something would be incoming, it had to be. Mobs like this didn’t just randomly act, they had specific programs to follow, specific abilities that had to be executed at different times.

  He set up his healing circle around the mob, placing it down so the tanks and the melee DPS could take advantage of it, and then he HoT’d each and everyone in the raid. He knew at seventy-five percent, if they were going to try having a hope in hell of beating that boss, they’d need healing already in place to withstand whatever AoE this guy had.

  Just because he knew they’d wipe to learn the fight didn’t mean he wouldn’t go down fighting.

  “Move!” Murmur and Beastial yelled as one. She glanced at the beastmaster as she was jumping to the side, tugging Sinister by the elbow of her robe to come over with her. He must have seen what she saw—the way it regurgitated, its weird body convulsing slightly as it got ready to spit a huge stream of poison at them out of its black gaping maw of death in its chest cavity.

  Sure enough, the sickly green-black stream landed point blank in the middle of where they’d been standing moments ago and ate through the blood and Buntu-drenched carpet in an instant, leaving acrid smoke in its wake.

  “Interrupt rotation!” Devlish called out as he engaged the grotesque spider. Its fangs jutted out much further than the Buntus’ had. Dripping strings of poison landed on Devlish’s shield, sizzling for a few moments before dissipating. It was the first thing Murmur had seen that didn’t just flow off his shield. While it didn’t burrow through, enough of it dripping on the shield was going to make it break.

  Still hanging only half down from her lair above them, the spider beast attacked with Web Blasts, which shot out only giving about half a second’s warning. The first time it happened, it managed to web half of Merlin to the wall. Damage began to tick as soon as it struck, and the ranger writhed in pain.

  “Stop it, you’re making it worse.” Murmur sent Snowy to get the ranger out of it. “We have to DPS you out of it.”

  It was much easier to accomplish once Merlin stopped wriggling, and they had him out of it fast. The second Web Blast attack barely missed Dansyn as he danced around where it struck. Except that movement took him out of melee range and required them to alter the interrupt rotation on the spot. Everyone needed to be fully aware of their positioning and the webs, because their interrupts needed to be saved for the venomous gush. If one of those attacks got through, Murmur didn’t think their armor would be as protective as Devlish’s shield, regardless of how good it usually was.

  Jinna, Rashlyn, Beastial, and Dansyn concentrated their attacks on the second set of legs. Its front feet were far too fast and raised to attack, and the way it s
till clung to the wall made its back feet too high up. It was a good strategy, one they’d used for several huge monsters before, but Murmur couldn’t help the feeling of desperation that clung to her. Something was off about this monster, like it wasn’t originally here.

  Granted, she also didn’t think the massive gaping chasm above them in the ceiling was in the original blueprints of the castle either. But what was a virtual world without a bit of interdimensional rifting?

  Not that it surprised her with what they’d experienced in the ruins. Nothing was going to surprise her anymore at this rate. Slowly, the monster ticked down to ninety percent health, and then it wiggled its butt, crouched down against the wall, and instinctively Devlish and the rest of the melee spread out.

  The queen Buntu raised its forelegs up to form a sort of half circle aimed from its mouth. A giant web radiated out in front of it, like it was trying to catch fish in a net, or maybe flies in this case.

  Jinna didn’t quite get out in time, and as soon as the web hit him, he started taking damage as the spider began to reel in its haul. Precision shots from the rangers were all that saved the rogue, cutting down the thread that dragged him in. The pets made short work of the rest of the web surrounding the dwarf, and he emerged from the growing cocoon looking slightly dazed.

  Murmur attempted to nullify the effect on him and wished Mellow had had a chance to let everyone drink from their cauldron again before this fight began. There just hadn’t been enough of a break—or any way to prepare for this fight.

  Everyone spread out, warily circling the queen Buntu, and Merlin notched an arrow. Murmur glanced to the side, fairly sure he was readying a stun just in case she cast that web again, but instead she rose on her back half with her four front legs flailing and crashed down from her perch above, shaking the ground as she scurried to meet Devlish again. Red flashed through the group of eyes that covered what should be her face, angry and hungry.