Dissonance

by K. T. Hanna

  Hortia crouched on all fours, her breath coming in painful gasps. Murmur threw the shield to clasp down on her, and her expression eased up. The little locus threw her a grateful look before cowering behind her brother while Murmur took care of the other two. If they couldn’t protect the siblings, then the parents would just gain a foothold in their middle. Fable couldn’t afford that.

  Beastial and Shir-Khan circled the platform as best they could, but the huge cat kept getting distracted by the large hound monster that was growling at Murmur, and the lights playing underneath the floor tiles.

  Arrows flew, for the most part bouncing harmlessly off the hide of Warinthe. Murmur could feel the frustration building behind her. They wouldn’t move from their platforms no matter how much the tanks taunted them. It was all Murmur could do to extend the shielding, reinforcing it with both her earth magic and her will. At least in this case, Xaskia had mana. If all else failed Murmur could drain her dry for the healers.

  Ranged targets had it easier, but finding something to get a damage foothold in was difficult. They’d grown so used to monsters, creatures where they could hack a leg off, or destroy a knee joint for maximum effectiveness. But this? No, here they weren’t that lucky.

  Jinna began producing throwing knives since he couldn’t get close to Warinthe without spiking himself on the massive defensive quills the strange beast had grown. Havoc and his pet managed a style of reaching attack with the scythe Murmur hadn’t seen them use yet. Seemed level forty had granted them all some unique aspects.

  Dansyn did minor damage but assisted Murmur in making sure that the bosses took as much damage as possible. And yet, it seemed so minimal. The floor flashed, and the minute was almost up, and they’d barely scratched the surface of damage they needed to do.

  Xestia and her siblings basically cowered in terror, and Murmur had to make sure she kept them in her awareness just in case they suddenly became enemies. She wouldn’t put it past Somnia to do that.

  Really? I thought we were friends.

  Murmur blinked rapidly. That hadn’t been Riasli. That...was something else. But there was no time to think on that right now. Maybe it was Thra, but it hadn’t sounded quite the same.

  Ninety-two percent each, and Mellow was about to have to refresh their debuff when the dance floor began to go nuts.

  It lit up, changing rapidly underneath them. Murmur happened to be standing on a purple one when they all paused for about three seconds. It glowed and recharged her, lighting up her mana, refilling the bar, as the red one that Sinister stood on did.

  But the others—no, the others stood on purples and reds, the occasional blues, and all of them got shocked for about two seconds, which felt like an age. Murmur watched in horror as their health or mana was drained, and transferred to their opponents up on the platform bringing their health and Xaskia’s mana back up to one hundred percent.

  “It’s the colors.” Sinister spoke softly. “Different class types have different colors. I’d be willing to bet the red is healer, the blue is probably tank, and the purple is utility, so Mellow and Murmur and probably Dansyn. I’d say yellow is melee because your energy is shown as being yellow and that would leave green for the ranged classes.”

  She sounded pretty sure. Murmur hoped her friend was right. “Okay. I guess we all try to get to the corresponding tile when they light up the floor next time.”

  “Do.” Mellow rubbed their neck. “That shock thing was not comfortable.”

  They continued their onslaught, more focused this time, but Murmur couldn’t help but think they should be whittling them down one at a time.

  Focus on her.

  Rashlyn: Why?

  Murmur bit back a sigh. If you tank him, and we kill her first, then we only have to tank him.

  Havoc: Logical, as long as he doesn’t gain her powers.

  Shut up, Havoc. Even Rash’s typing sounded grumpy.

  They began to whittle down Xaskia’s health. Her damage pulled ahead of Warinthe just the slightest bit. They managed to get her down to eighty-five percent this time, and Warinthe at ninety-five when the disco went off.

  Murmur only had to take two steps to find a purple, but it was Rash who missed her blue by one square, standing on yellow. She shook visibly as the current ran through her, and all Murmur could see was the head detaching and rolling to her feet. She tried to shake her head, but that only made the feeling of vertigo worse.

  This time when the disco was over, Xaskia’s health had only risen back one percent, as had Warinthe’s.

  “Next time we don’t miss.” Rashlyn’s tone held confidence in it, a surety that she wasn’t going to miss a third time. Murmur hoped she was right. At this rate it was going to take forever to whittle down health, and they had eleven minutes left.

  The fight dragged on, tedium set in, and Murmur stifled a yawn. Strange. It hadn’t even been another minute yet. She frowned and yawned again, which was very difficult to do simultaneously. Slowly, she turned around, wondering why she was suddenly so sluggish.

  Hortia was there, suddenly, right in front of Murmur, those dead eyes intermingling with the vision of Rashlyn’s decapitated head as it stared up at her. Opening her mouth to speak, Murmur didn’t get that far because Hortia leaned forward, and stabbed her in the stomach.

  Cold began to creep into Murmur’s head as Snowy dived away from Warinthe and clawed at Hortia’s face, tumbling her to the ground. But not before the girl got a second stab in. Her brain felt sluggish, and not in the usual way.

  So many voices reached her, but nothing she could specifically understand. The room spun. Screams echoed into her, drowning out reason, drowning out logic. She felt like she was drowning.

  As suddenly as the fogginess began, it stopped. She looked down at her feet where Snowy sat, his muzzle dripping with blood. At the body next to him—Hortia’s body, her throat ripped out and a bloodied dagger lying at her side. Now the eyes were dead, but they looked the same as they had when she’d attacked Murmur.

  “No,” Murmur heard Xestia mutter. “No. No.”

  Murmur didn’t know how to respond, but she could feel the rage building in the older sister, feel the fury expanding outward, beyond Murmur’s shield. The sheer power of the girl’s abilities—ones the former banshee had taken complete control of and ones Murmur hadn’t thought extended into this form of the character. What a rookie mistake.

  But when she looked directly at Xestia, the girl didn’t make eye contact. In fact, she wasn’t even looking in Murmur’s direction. Her focus was all on her mother, and there was nothing but hatred in it.

  “Are you happy now? She’s dead, and it’s all your fault. You wanted power. Let’s see how you handle this!” Xestia roared at her mother and opened her mouth to shriek.

  Was that where the banshee power had come from? Was it hereditary? If they didn’t try to protect the remaining two they’d rescued, Murmur was never going to find out.

  “Snowy,” she commanded, and the wolf walked to her side. Murmur tried to ignore his coating of blood, knowing he’d done it for her. Knowing he’d needed to make the possession stop.

  She borrowed some of his strength and reached down, grounding herself better, more strongly, more sturdily into the ground, and she boosted her Earth Shielding, stretching it out with her mind, pushing her MA as far and as thick as she could coat it. It was the only way she could protect them from the sound, from the debilitating effect that was currently ripping through Xaskia.

  Xestia’s mouth was open in a rigid scream, the sound funneling directly to her mother, slamming the locus in the face and tearing the skin from the bone. It peeled back slowly, as if her mother was willing it to remain. The Banshee scream decayed the skin, making it drip off in huge melting portions, plopping to the ground as it plummeted her mother’s health.

  It pulled at the eye sockets, revealing black no
thingness behind it, until that too began to mingle with the pale silver flesh and flow down the matriarch’s face. Fascinating in a macabre way, even the skin around the nose holes began to bubble and detatch.

  “Now!” yelled Wartia to Mellow. “Throw it now!”

  Mellow obliged, throwing another vial directly at Xaskia. They watched it explode directly on the woman’s face, littering dust into the gaping wound that was her upper body now. Like salt, it had to sting if the screams tearing from Xaskia’s throat were anything to go by.

  Not only that, but where it struck the open wounds, the flesh sizzled as the dust ate through it like acid. Her mouth opened wide to attack again but did nothing at all except stretch the tendons on each side of her jaw like rubber bands about to break. Murmur was so mesmerized by the entire process herself, that she almost missed the next disco floor.

  She barely made it to the purple square, and the round passed uneventfully. Even with Warinthe chomping at the bit, Rashlyn managed to keep him at bay. His eyes grew wilder, almost uncontrollable, like he was rabid. His health melted away slowly, but his wife’s was nearing fifty percent, at least it was with Xestia’s bombarding siren scream. Perhaps the familial relationship didn’t just work one way. It appeared as if her scream debilitated her father just as much.

  But Murmur watched the young locus—or the ancient locus girl, whichever way she looked at it—and she seemed to be growing into a shadow of herself. The scream was draining her very essence. The desperation that Murmur honed in on in Xestia’s thoughts was incoherent and sorrow-filled.

  Mellow tossed another of their vials onto Xaskia. The concoctions were affecting her upper body now, melting the skin, the flesh under it, the cartilage, slowly creating a skeleton warrior. Murmur gagged at the stench the acid burning flesh produced and focused on Xestia and the battle she fought with them.

  She couldn’t let the girl waste away. A hand touched her shoulder unexpectedly and she turned around to see who it was. Wartia smiled sadly at her. “I need to take her place. Can you help me?”

  Murmur glanced at his sister again, the living one. He was right; she was barely more than a ghost herself now. She’d screamed out everything she had. “I’ll stun her.”

  He smiled and bowed his head briefly in acknowledgement before moving a few steps forward. Murmur waited until he nodded once and cast Stupefy on his sister.

  The cry cut off abruptly, and Xaskia appeared, for just a brief second, to sneer with delight as she tried to stand tall again, one of her eyes dangling from its socket. But then her good eye saw Wartia, and she balked. If possible, she even looked scared.

  Murmur wasn’t expecting the wail that Wartia emitted. Sorrow and anguish, anger and hatred, self-loathing and despair. All of it whirled around the cavern, and Murmur clenched down as tightly as she could. Even still, she could still see everyone wavering, still feel their resolve slipping.

  And then, instead of just disco tiles, the floor spawned four warriors as well. One each on white, blue, red, and purple.

  “Shit.”

  Murmur stared at them blankly, but the three seconds came and went, and they couldn’t seem to diminish Xaskia’s health.

  “White. Leave the one on the white alone. They’re the ones we have to leave, remember? Them and...yellow?” Mellow spluttered the words out in their haste to speak.

  The riddle. Of course, the riddle.

  “Okay.” Devlish shrugged. “Leaving the white one.”

  They only appeared to move when engaged. And each of the warriors went down in several hits. Murmur frowned. “Ranged. When they pop, we need to switch our targets. Don’t make melee pull off the bosses.”

  The white-tile warrior remained. Focused unflinchingly on the bosses, their hands raised up and to either side. Murmur really hoped that would make more sense as the fight progressed.

  Jinna screamed, and Murmur turned to find him. He limped away from Warinthe, pain written all over his face and blood streaming down his leg. The wound healed over sluggishly, and the pallor didn’t quite leave his skin.

  “I hate hound dog people things,” he grumbled and dove back in to where he’d actually been picking away at the tendons on the back leg.

  Slowly, Wartia began to lose body mass as the scream drained him like it had done his sister. They didn’t have long. It was going to be close, and in the end, Murmur wasn’t sure anyone would have been saved.

  When Xaskia hit twenty-five percent, the tiles flared up again. This time on yellow, pink, purple and green. Without hesitation, the ranged classes switched their targets, downing all of them but the yellow one inside of seconds. The remaining warrior raised its hands to either side, palm up.

  Warinthe had only just hit sixty percent when they were done with the second batch. Havoc divided his pet’s attacks and his own, leaving one of them on each target. DoTs ticked over on the hound. Rash exhausted all of her abilities on cool down to keep him at bay, and Sinister’s mana was woefully low.

  Murmur glanced at her MA and shrugged. With Xaskia’s health wearing lower, it was now or never. She cast Mana Block, Mana Theft, and Mana Drain in quick succession. It not only filled her own bar about half way, but Sinister and Veranol’s as well. Not to mention topping off Havoc and Mellow. Xaskia’s mana drained woefully low, and Murmur realized the boss had been holding herself together with magic, as much as she could anyway.

  With her mana drained, she didn’t have the power to do so. Her hit points sank fast. And when she finally dropped to the ground it was a shock, and they almost missed the next spawn of warriors.

  This time however, the warriors moved. Four of them did, anyway. This time they had six. But the one on the white tile and the one on the yellow didn’t budge. Wartia looked like he was waning, almost completely done. Xestia wrung her hands, completely depleted and unable to help.

  Ranged picked off the other four; it just took a little longer and Devlish’s AoE taunt to do so. Once they were dead, the other two raised their hands just like those before them.

  Xestia sighed, and Wartia stopped his scream. They glanced at each other and stepped forward, raising their hands in with the warriors.

  “Mellow.” Xestia spoke almost too softly to hear over the fighting. “Our sister is gone, and we need a third. You are the only one who has this quest. I cannot promise you will live.”

  Mellow nodded and took their place as indicated.

  Warinthe’s eyes flashed but were constantly forced to obey Rashlyn again. The hound let out a fearsome howl that reverberated off the walls and caused rock debris to fall down around them. Mellow joined Xestia and Wartia in a chant, hands joined with those of the warriors, seven strong.

  Murmur could feel the air around her calming, the calamity drifting away as peace drifted back into the place it belonged. Warinthe’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed, reverting momentarily back to the locus he’d been before.

  Blank stare and all, Murmur felt like it was watching her until the power of the chant climaxed in a huge electrical charge that charred his body to ash in front of her.

  She blinked against the light and looked around for Xestia and Wartia, but they weren’t there, and there was only ash where Mellow had been.

  “Guys?” She began to panic, they hadn’t meant die die, had they?

  “It’s okay, Mur. I’m here. Just got a little crisp in there. Didn’t lose experience though, because it was a part of my quest. Or something.” Mellow’s voice lulled Murmur back from the edge.

  At least until the cackling began to echo through the cavern.

  Sinister groaned. “Damn it. I’d forgotten all about Lilith.”

  So had Murmur, and she forced herself to fight the tiredness inside and be wary as a whirlwind pushed into the room and onto the middle of the platform, white, bright, and intense.

  The laughing continued and stopped abru
ptly when Riasli appeared right in front of them.

  Storm Entertainment

  Somnia Online Division

  Game Development Offices

  Day Nineteen

  Laria sorted through the files pertaining to the server crash, twirling and untwirling a clump of her hair. They knew the technicalities of what happened, but not the actual reason why. Sure, they had suppositions and theories, but nothing sufficed to put her mind at ease.

  She glanced at the screen Wren was playing on, relieved to see that at least one dungeon wasn’t going to shit. It didn’t appear to be spitting the entire player base out anyway. They stood speaking to an NPC she didn’t recognize, but that wasn’t anything new. While she’d overseen its development, that’s what her animation team was for. Talented little bunch.

  She grunted out her frustration, and leaned back in her chair, disengaging her AR as she pinched the bridge of her nose. Sleep. After all of the stress with James, Davenport, and the servers, Laria desperately needed sleep.

  Curling up on the floor next to Wren’s containment capsule sounded like heaven. Pushing herself to stand, she realized she was more exhausted than she thought. It was getting late, and she couldn’t even remember when she’d wandered into the office that morning. It had to be over twelve hours ago.

  Turning the knob to open her door, it suddenly pushed inward smacking her in the shoulder.

  “Damn it!” She glared at the incoming whirlwind, but her irritation waned when she saw it was Shayla. “Seriously, that hurt. Give me a good reason why you haven’t said you’re sorry yet.”

  Shayla raised an eyebrow, but it did nothing to diminish the worry line prominently figuring on her forehead. “Sorry, whatever.” She closed the door behind her, and lifted the blinds to peek through them. Her hands shook slightly and she seemed nervous.