by K. T. Hanna
Two percent.
Unsure how much longer she could handle the screeching in her mind, Murmur clenched her fists until the knuckles were white, and Snowy stopped his weaving and left the hellhounds to give her some support. She twined her fingers in his hair and pulled the strength he offered her. She wasn’t sure how he’d done it, but his presence, his magical power, made it that bit easier to combat the spike.
One percent.
But even with the reinforcement, her shield began to crack against the onslaught of the dying minotaur’s will. Dying wishes probably had that whole backing-of-death-behind-them thing, and she didn’t think she could combat it. Staggering to her knees, she clung to Snowy to avoid lying on the ground. Her head pounded like someone was consistently taking a sledgehammer to it, and her eyes began to water with the pain inside.
The shied shattered, and the spinning projectile hit Sinister’s Blood Shield. The blood mage cried out, gritting her teeth. It didn’t have the thickness of Murmur’s shield, and already Murmur could see Sin’s life draining, but she had no energy left to do anything to help.
Zero.
The minotaur crumpled to the ground, falling the rest of the way with a resounding thud. The massive projectile fell harmlessly to the ground, bouncing on the stone floor once before shattering at next impact, and Sinister leaned back against the staircase wall, panting with exertion.
And Murmur smiled even through the haze of her sight as she panted, her arms around Snowy. At least until the headache built up so much it felt like her very own quill trying to eliminate her. She squeezed her eyes shut and dug down deep into her Earth Shielding, trying to pull at the ground to stabilize her pain the way she’d attempted to reinforce the buff she flung out to Sin. Slightly soothing, it took the edge off, and she was able to open her eyes again, thanking the dim lighting prevalent in the castle.
Sinister was still leaning against the staircase wall, but her eyes were riveted on something behind Mur, her mouth agape.
Murmur turned fast, and blinked. The statues were dissolving. No, that wasn’t quite correct. The stone around the people who’d been encased in the statues was melting. The first few didn’t even move, but a couple of the next ones began to blink rapidly, and then move their fingers, and gradually their heads as the stone retreated further and further down their bodies. Some of them definitely weren’t going to like being changed back into breathing beings given their injuries.
Upon inspection, Murmur had to frown. She didn’t think they were players, because how long had they been stuck that way? It wasn’t even possible, was it? But at the same time their inspection information was completely at odds with the waves of emotion coming from all of them.
The feelings were complex and deep, worried and confused, desperate and angry, sad and bewildered. They poured over her in waves that weren’t unlike the tide rushing to meet the moon and Murmur staggers as the pain in her head began to increase once more.
She shut herself off for a moment, building a barrier around herself in such a tight and complete way that nothing was going to get through, and then she dug back into her Earth Shielding, binding herself tighter and more rigidly than before, allowing the pure and clean strength to flow through her. And then she slowly let herself sense again, being cautious not to take in too much at once. If she didn’t learn how to expand her abilities, she was never going to get stronger.
Slowly she separated them into individuals; it took effort to sort of slot them into a small pocket each and keep them there while she sorted their feelings from one another so she could help define what each one was experiencing. There was a dangerous undertone in amongst them, and she wanted to get to the bottom of it, to find that person, because she didn’t think their rash emotions were going to do them any favors.
The freed creatures began to move, from all different peoples. There were locus and dark elves, gnomes and dwarves, luna and feles, and more. They were still coming to terms with what had happened and how they’d woken up.
Right in the middle was the angry one, the vengeful one, the one who’d likely get himself killed if he kept up at it. He was strong of will and pretty nicely built, and his teeth were sharp and vicious. She looked at him through her eyes and not just her emotions, touched on his thoughts and realized that while angry and quite violent, there was nothing rabid about his thought process. He was cool and calm and collected, which made him very dangerous, she just wasn’t sure if they should be scared of him as well.
Murmur realized she needn’t have worried about the luna who was radiating a thirst for revenge. He wasn’t about to do anything on his own, for he knew he wasn’t strong enough to defeat the monster Fable had just taken down.
What she hadn’t expected was for all of the survivors they freed to follow them through the castle on their way to Arita’s throne room. Sure, about twelve of the statues had simply fallen limply to the ground in a pile of dust, but the rest seemed to be channeling their anger quite well. Sinister kept glancing back and tugging on Mur’s sleeve. “Should we be wary about them following us?”
Her whisper was loud and all Murmur wanted to do was reach over and ruffle her hair, but she resisted, and answered the question instead. “Not really. I mean. Why? We freed them, which made them like us, and now we’re heading to the throne room.”
“What if they’re a trap?”
Murmur swore someone laughed behind her, but she sighed and leant in to give a hug to Sinister. Just a short one as they walked, just enough to make her miss Sin as soon as she let go. Mur sighed. “Everything we’ve encountered so far has basically been a trap of some sort. We’d be foolish not to assume everything isn’t a trap.”
“Well, yes.” Sinister fell quiet, and Murmur could still sense the unease surrounding her friend, and wished she could take it away. Before she realized it, she was practically projecting comfort and peace over her friends. She scaled it back so hard she almost got whiplash, but it was worth it. Inadvertently influencing her friends, even doing it because she wanted them to be happy or feel better, was a very slippery slope. One she didn’t intend to crash at the bottom of.
Still, though. Having come through the castle, and fought past four bosses that didn’t appear to have been here the last time they entered, Murmur knew they were getting close to the queen. They had to be. The rumbling behind them of the angry voices belonging to the people they freed leant a chilling rhythm to the march toward the throne room.
The air grew colder, evidenced not only in the fact that Murmur was freezing, but also in the way the white of her breath grew thicker the closer they got to the throne room. Cold could lull people into a sleepiness, a self-preservation activation. But Murmur didn’t think that was the case here. Arita was deliberately sending the castle spiraling to sub-zero temperatures in order to push whatever her agenda was.
This time Murmur was ready for her, and from everything she could sense from them she had a very pissed off group of people willing to fight at her back. This time, Fable wasn’t backing down. The lack of monsters along the halls as they proceeded toward the throne room was curious. No spiders hanging from the ceiling, no gargoyles coming to life, though there were plenty of them scattered along the halls. In fact, the entire set of corridors they traversed held absolutely nothing they could kill, or that appeared to want to kill them.
“Anyone feel like this is way too easy?” Beastial spoke softly, and even so his voice bounced through the hall as if the echo was chasing it. He sighed, and Murmur glanced at Sinister who did nothing but glare at the beastmaster.
“What, no comment?” Havoc nudged her.
She glared at him too. “You all know what I’m going to say anyway, so why would it matter if I have something to say? He knows he screwed up.”
And while Murmur often made fun of Sin for her superstitions, she couldn’t do so now. The atmosphere was heavy, and the emotions in
the castle lay like a thick blanket over the entire area. Part trepidation, part fear, part longing, and part vengeance. It leaked through the cracks where the mortar moored the stones together and spilled into the hallway, weaving around her friends’ feet as they walked, completely unaware of how emotions and memories were already tarnishing the area.
“He’s right, though.” Veranol spoke up. “Everything is too easy. Sinister should have died in that last fight, I have no idea how my heals managed to keep her alive.”
Sin paled even more. “I have to agree.”
The silence followed them awkwardly as they continued to walk through the halls.
Murmur clenched that damned mental shield tighter around her friends, making sure to keep them safe from whatever it was creeping around this area. While she knew Arita was manipulative, she hadn’t thought the dark elf queen capable of things like this. Not that she wouldn’t do it, that she couldn’t do it. Her abilities had seemed to lie in different areas. Murmur touched her lips at the memory of the kiss, and wondered, just for a moment how Sin had felt when that happened. Probably not nearly as shocked as Mur, but likely just as angry.
The hall began to widen gradually until it was a sweeping entrance leading up to a huge double door that was extremely familiar. They’d stood before these doors over twenty levels ago. Twenty, freaking levels.
“When did we level?” She asked in surprise as she examined her HUD.
Sinister laughed. “What are you...oh.”
“Probably in the middle of the statues coming to life while Sin and yourself were screaming in pain, Mur.” Havoc managed to keep a straight face. “Probably meshed in with the pain in your heads.”
Thirty-eight. Murmur frowned. How had she missed thirty-seven? Was that after the slime thing? Twenty-two levels ago felt like an age. After she’d found out she was in a coma, even though now she’d beg to differ. It seemed more like a forced stasis, but her thoughts were running off again as she took in a deep breath and eyed the door.
Devlish took a hesitant step forward and tapped the door handles. Just like last time the massive doors swung inward, but this time the interior was anything but welcoming. No longer were there people gathered in small groups conversing while the queen lounged on her throne.
No, this time the room was dark, only lit by several fire pits that dotted the interior of the room. High up on a dais, with stairs leading down on all sides sat Arita, her chin on the back of her left hand as she leaned forward to inspect them, a look of pure tedium on her delicate dark elf face. Her armor had advanced since they last saw her, and while it still hugged her like a second skin, it covered more of her lithe figure than it had previously, all the while accentuating her obvious features.
Sitting at her feet were two large hellhounds, somewhat bigger than the three who’d accompanied Fable and their entourage, but not by much. Compared to herself, they were massive, like the guardians of her own personal hell. She reached out with her right hand and scratched one of them behind the ears, her eyes never leaving Murmur and the rest.
“Ah,” Arita drawled out, her tone even more bored than her expression. “It seems you found my errant hounds and freed them from their punishment.”
Murmur was about to speak, but Arita drew herself up, her blood-black armor glinting in the firelight, and shook her finger at the enchanter. The hounds rose with her, their backs coming up to her hips, lending her a distinct body guarded appearance. “No, it’s my turn to speak. It wasn’t your place to free them, you know. And you killed my Spidoptria and minotaur too. And for that, dear Fable, you will pay.”
The dark fireball whizzed past Murmur’s head, so close it singed her Tiachi and sent it scurrying for higher ground onto the top of her head. Havoc barely ducked out of its line of fire, but it hit Leeroy straight in the side.
Black-purple fire slowly worked its way out from where it struck. Even though that wasn’t quite it. It was more like it sucked the pet in toward it, dragging it into a black hole until he disappeared. But Murmur could only spare a glance out of her peripheral vision, because Arita was holding back. Angry balls of black flitted around the room, aiming for heads, arms, legs, and any appendage they could reach for. The balls bled when they splatted against the walls, absorbing into the stone so darkly that Murmur feared what would happen if one of them flew against a wall.
The hellhounds at her feet shot out toward them, their jowls red and drooling, dripping acid onto the stone floor as they shot toward them, leaving small trails of smoke in their wake. Arita was on fire. She was angry. She was armored from head to toe in a formfitting, serviceable set of what looked like blackened steel now that Murmur got a closer look. Although Mur knew it couldn’t be made out of that considering how much it would weigh.
Casting her slows on the queen didn’t do much as her attacks weren’t melee style, and yet Murmur frowned at the fact that she didn’t seem to have a spell slower in her arsenal. Although.
She shot Mind Bolt at the queen, and let out a breath of relief when it actually struck. None of this enemy-is-too-powerful-for-your-abilities shit, nope. If the death glare Arita was leveling at her was anything to go by, Murmur had stopped her casting cold, and while she couldn’t do it non-stop, she had grown enough that her MA abilities were constantly lessening in cost, and she could keep that shit up for a good while, provided she didn’t have to execute anything else in an emergency.
Arita’s gaze flitted between Devlish and Murmur, anger seeping through her pores to spread out among them. It pushed at the blockade Murmur held over her friend’s minds, seeking entrance, demanding dominance. But Murmur held firm. She wasn’t about to hand herself over to the mercy of the queen, and there was no way she’d let the crafty witch get her hands on her friends either.
The moment Arita could cast again, she sent an immediate Void Ball in Murmur’s direction, shot it out so fast there was no way to interrupt or stun her. Only the fact that Murmur was watching every movement saved her because this one didn’t float slowly, it sped like a bullet toward her.
She barely ducked out of the way in time, and rose to see Arita’s grin widening. There had to be a recast timer on those ones, because no others shot out at Murmur for several seconds. Now she knew how to recognize them though, she’d be watching for them. Stealing away her Mind Bolts, she’d have to make sure to use them only when strictly necessary. But when was necessary going to be, and when should she take the risk to find out?
Devlish was having a shit of a time trying to combat the queen. She moved around with magic, dodging in unnatural ways with flexibility that had to be enhanced by her powers. Her hounds bounded around, slowly whittling down the ones Fable rescued, and she felt a need to protect them arise.
Then she realized it wasn’t her need—it was Snowy’s. His eyes hummed a deep red, not only visible, but tangible in the way his skin thrummed against her leg. He was focused on them, and Murmur concentrated briefly on his aura, watching him lend strength to the hellhounds he’d helped save, watching him bolster them in ways she didn’t know he could. It seemed Arita’s punishment was going to bite her in the ass. Literally.
With the hounds finally fighting a challenging foe, and Arita momentarily distracted by Havoc and Leeroy, Murmur sent out her sensing nets, farther than she had earlier, testing a theory. But it came back empty and left her puzzled. This wasn’t another case like Riasli’s then. Arita was acting within her parameters. They weren’t cordoned off from the rest of Somnia, and when she checked guild chat, she could see recent conversation.
So why was it that Hazenthorne appeared so different this time around? Hightower had been straightforward, and the ruins had been a complete nightmare. She’d expected this dungeon to be completely different than it was, that being entirely the same as before. A quick in and out. But with all of the changes, with all of the fighting, maybe Arita was trying to tell them something.
&nbs
p; In a completely violent and difficult-to-figure-out way.
She barely managed to dodge the next Void Ball that whisked her way. Eyeing her timer, she realized only twenty seconds had passed. For something that lethal, that was boring a hole in the solid stone behind her, twenty seconds wasn’t nearly enough of a cooldown.
Arita’s health wasn’t budging, at least not a lot. It had moved maybe three percent the entire time they’d been fighting her. Which meant she was pulling protections from somewhere around them, perhaps from her castle itself. But there were no emotions or senses coming from the stones, not even something vague, so it wasn’t sentient.
And with a lack of sensations emitting from it, she also didn’t see how it could be a vessel for power. Arita’s frown expressed boredom of the highest degree. She barely flinched as arrows struck her, because they didn’t stick. While they also didn’t quite bounce off, there was a soft thudding sound as if the impact was muted and cast out the projectiles in distaste.
Slowly, the hellhounds they’d rescued gained the upper hand, and Murmur could still feel the flow of strength from Snowy to them. Arita barely spared them a glance, as if they weren’t worthy of her attention because they were about to fail.
Murmur noticed her about to cast, another twenty seconds were almost over, and she interrupted the Void Ball with her Mind Bolt, interrupting the cast and preventing Arita from casting something for the next nine seconds.
This time Arita grunted, her annoyance clearly written on her face. Her eyes flashed through myriad colors and settled back on black. She drew in a breath and beat Murmur to the punch as the enchanter tried to cast her next Mind Bolt.
The stun the queen cast ricocheted around the entire room, enveloping every single one of them, making Murmur’s Mind Bolt freeze mid-cast. All except Snowy and the hellhounds. They were free to roam, and they circled Arita, snapping at her heels, yet not coming close enough to touch, wary of her all the while.