by K. T. Hanna
Table of Contents
Title Page
Map of Tarishna
Map of Cenedril
Also by KT Hanna
Previously in Somnia
Chapter One: Reveal
Chapter Two: Regret
Chapter Three: Underwater
Chapter Four: Hold Your Breath
Chapter Five: Engage
Chapter Six: Moving On
Chapter Seven: Underneath
Chapter Eight: Hippos
Chapter Nine: Moving Under
Chapter Ten: Pivya
Chapter Eleven: Too Easy
Chapter Twelve: Always Right
Chapter Thirteen: Sheladrios
Chapter Fourteen: Rescuer
Chapter Fifteen: Sibling Rivalry
Chapter Sixteen: Reward
Chapter Seventeen: The Keys
Chapter Eighteen: Reset
Chapter Nineteen: Self-Analysis
Chapter Twenty: Preparations
Chapter Twenty-One: The Fountains
Chapter Twenty-Two: Prison
Chapter Twenty-Three: Spiked
Chapter Twenty-Four: Lease Expected
Chapter Twenty-Five: Surprise
Chapter Twenty-Six: Impossible Quest
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Influence
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Hidden
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Riasli
Chapter Thirty: Around the Mulberry Bush
Chapter Thirty-One: Abra Cadabra
Chapter Thirty-Two: Frenemies
Chapter Thirty-Three: Throne Room
Chapter Thirty-Four: All Against One
Chapter Thirty-Five: It's the End of the World as We Know It
Author's Note
Acknowledgments
Landmarks
Cover
SOMNIA ONLINE: SYNERGY
Author: K.T. Hanna
Cover Artist: Marko Horvatin
Typography: Bonnie Price
Formatting & Interior Design: Caitlin Greer
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 Katie Hanna
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1-948983-30-3 (Trade Paperback Edition)
ISBN-13: 978-1-948983-31-0 (Hardcover Edition)
ISBN-13: 978-1-948983-29-7 (E-Book Edition)
Somnia Online:
Initializing
Anomaly
Fragments
Dissonance
Distortion
Fusion
Synergy
Last Chance:
Rise
Rebel
The Domino Project:
Chameleon
Hybrid
Parasite
Dawn & Bonnie
For welcoming me and always being there.
Michael and Riasli grow stronger, causing glitches throughout the system and destabilizing dungeons worldwide. The system can’t handle much more disruption.
Somnia becomes more than just a voice in Murmur’s mind, and is close to manifesting fully. With more AIs gaining awareness and developing their own personalities, Somnia faces a race to system overload unless the virus is conquered.
Fable and their allies face dungeon after dungeon, their minds tempted by the virus at every turn. Murmur’s mind manipulation pulls her into darker options, manipulating those closest to her. Just when she thinks they may all be safe, Sinister is ripped from her arms into the Glacier Lakes by a tentacled monster.
Sinister disappeared through the portal with a yelp, the sound cut off abruptly once she was fully through. A half second past in complete silence before Murmur managed to will herself into movement. Without giving a second thought to the tentacles waiting to snatch anyone who got close to the portal, Murmur jumped through it, her upper arm wrenching out of Havoc’s grasp as he tried to stop her.
Sin was already in there, taken against her will, and Murmur wasn’t about to let anything bad happen to her. She sent out a shockwave of thought through her sensing net as she sailed through the opening, broadcasting the thought out that they needed to rescue the bloodmage, that the entire raid had to go through this dungeon anyway, be damned with sleep.
Hesitation spread through Murmur as the cold hit her upon landing on the other side. Maybe she couldn’t handle this by herself after all.
She glanced up at her buff icon: Boon of Ice. Though she could feel the wind like she wasn’t wearing armor, at least it was keeping her warmer than the surrounds would have her otherwise feel. Murmur frowned at the soft ground she stepped onto, the lip of the landmass in the middle of the lake with the skeletal remains of the upper floors of a castle. Sounded about right. Of course, she wasn’t going to land somewhere she could easily gather forces. She tested her weight on the surface, the part of her mind still trying to find Sinister quieter while she assessed the situation.
Tiachi chattered nonstop at her ear, shivering as she clung to one of Murmur’s hair strands. But Murmur wasn’t really paying attention; she was listening for whatever she could hear that might lead her to Sin. Her mind focused on the presences she could sense around them. All of them large, and all of them intelligent. Damn it. It was far easier to fight stupid opponents than it was to fight the ones who could think strategically.
Still, she could feel Sin’s presence, sense her mind, but not quite reach her. Just a few moments of quiet was all Mur would need while she tapped into the power she could feel in her chest. She pushed the sensation of strangeness into the back of her thoughts while she concentrated on locating Sinister. The bloodmage appeared to be in the water. In the ice-cold water as the towering castle above them loomed out of the freezing liquid.
Underwater breathing. Wasn’t that a thing Sin had? Murmur had it. She pushed down at the panic, trying to seal it away in its own little box. It wasn’t going to do her any good like this. And panic certainly wasn’t going to help her rescue Sin.
Snowy tugged on her robe, gently at first and with more immediacy thereafter. Murmur glanced down and realized he was pawing at the ground where it went down into the icy depths. “She down there then?” she muttered, casting the water breathing spell on herself. A whole fifteen minutes. That was going to be a bitch to recast if the raid ended up, as she suspected, underwater.
Murmur dove in, the water encapsulating her like a forming crystal. At first the cold bit into her but then the Boon kicked in, and the cold drifted away. It took a while for her eyes to adjust to the water vision, and she made a mental note to check on the spell later. Maybe it helped with seeing underwater too. Sinister’s red robes floated around her like blood pooling in the water.
For a split second, Murmur was certain she’d been injured, hurt…but then she realized Sinister was flailing in the water, using her hands to summon blood bombs even as she stabbed at the damn tentacle that was trying to drag her to the bottom. Anger creased her brow, and her tiny, sharp dark elf teeth flashed in the strange distorted water light. Sinister was pissed.
A brief brush of her friend’s status and Murmur realized she’d already cast the water breathing spell on herself. Snowy was swimming toward the bloodmage without any direction from Murmur, and she let him do what he wanted, knowing he was quite attached to Sinister too.
Several seconds later, the octopus that dragged Sinister prematurely into this dungeon area recoiled as part of a tentacle was severed. This time greenish blood flooded the area, mixing with Sinister’s red robes, lending a macabre Christmas feeling to the whole event.
Sinister caught Murmu
r’s gaze and held it as she swam defiantly back to the enchanter, and Murmur couldn’t help the sigh of relief that escaped her, with maybe a touch of embarrassment. She should have known Sin wouldn’t need rescuing, but the need to make sure she was okay demanded Murmur try.
Putting one arm around Sinister’s waist, she allowed Snowy to pull them to the surface. Once there, they staggered out onto the strange white sand. The cold, once again, hit her in the face, but this time because she was wet. Marginally resembling a drowned rat.
She brushed herself off and stood to face the raid. Rashlyn hurried forward to check on Sin, flashing a glare at Murmur as she did so.
Not many of the raiders made eye contact with Murmur, and most of them stood with their arms crossed and scowls on their faces. Murmur cocked her head to one side as she emptied the water from that ear. They were behaving oddly, and from her thought sensing net, she could tell the irritation was directed at her. That wasn’t a problem, of course; she could just make them all feel better so they didn’t have to worry and could move on to get through this dungeon too. The quicker the better.
As she gathered her thoughts in order to funnel them through her net, Veranol and Devlish stepped out of the line up and walked to stand straight in front of her. “No, Mur.”
Veranol’s voice held an edge to it, like he was talking to a student or a medical intern or something. He didn’t seem like he was in a good mood. From the tension that ran through his shoulders, to the icy glare in his eyes. “We need to talk.”
His words came out crisper than celery. Murmur balked for a moment, reaching down to touch Snowy’s neck fur and scratch him just under his ears. He grounded her, as did the feel of the earth through the sand. She had a distinct premonition she was going to need grounding in the coming conversation.
Devlish nodded, his lacerta face serious, even if it was harder to read his expression. For the life of her, Murmur couldn’t figure out what she’d done, but annoyance began at the base of her spine working its way up to her mind. What the hell was their problem? They had a world to save, a virus to fix, which all meant she couldn’t mollycoddle them.
Jinna and Merlin tagged along, Havoc bringing up the rear as they moved over just on the inside of the castle skeleton that still remained, sunk into the sand. Murmur tried to push down the anger that roiled up inside her, attempted to make sure she’d at least listen to her friends. But she was angry at them, upset even. The judgement on their faces regardless of when or why, it rubbed her the wrong way. After everything she’d done, she believed she deserved better than that.
“What have I done now? Did I regen mana too fast? Was I too focused on getting to Sin?” She pushed the words out, trying to play down the irritation threatening to choke her.
“All of the above, damn it, Mur.” Veranol flung his hands in the air obviously having difficulty containing his own temper. “You did it again.”
“Did what?” She tried to remember anything she’d really fucked up but couldn’t.
“You seriously don’t know?” Devlish actually sounded sad, and Veranol, it seemed, was lost for words.
But before she could answer, Havoc motioned with both hands, slamming a shield around her. The dark gold light it gave off made her head swim with nausea. Its diameter was barely enough to encase her and completely claustrophobic. She couldn’t feel past it, like it blocked off her path to her thought sensing net and projection, or perhaps just to where it could reach confining her influenceable area to only inside this prison. So the only reach she had was directly around herself.
Murmur pushed down on the panic, the sudden feeling of not being able to extend her mind. On that freezing cold beach, with the wet sand beneath her, inside a tiny magical cupboard, she felt truly alone. Not even Snowy could reach her in there. Limitations like these didn’t even exist for her abilities in the real world anymore. “What the fuck, Havoc?” She barely got the words out as the panic began to make her hyperventilate.
“Take it easy. You’re fine.” He snapped at her, his brows furrowed in a way that showed his exhaustion and somehow so angry he couldn’t think. “Breathe slowly and listen. I can’t hold this shield for long, but I hope it’s long enough to get through to you. Do you feel that?
“This is a daily recast. I’m giving up a huge defensive spell to try and make you see what it is you’re doing. Because the words we’ve tried, the reasoning we’ve attempted, they just don’t seem to be working.” Havoc’s voice was soft now, like he was just so tired.
“Fine.” Murmur had calmed somewhat once she realized this was temporary, and she crossed her arms waiting to listen, barely resisting the urge to tap her foot with impatience.
“You have to stop, Mur.” It was Merlin’s turn, as however Havoc maintained the barrier apparently needed a lot of concentration. “You have to stop inflicting your own feelings, your own goals, and your own purpose on everyone else. Overriding someone’s inclinations or wishes…it’s fucking evil.”
Mur took a step back, or she tried to, but the barrier stopped her. “I don’t do that…” Even as she said the words, she pushed out to soothe them with her own mind, almost involuntarily. But it reverberated around in with her, like it couldn’t stick on her because it was her own spell, but needed an out. Gradually it reduced in potency, and Murmur stood there, aghast at what she’d done.
She went to speak again, subconsciously pushing out soothing and coaxing manipulations at the same time. Again, the emotions rattled around inside her confines until they fizzled out.
Suddenly the barrier fell, and Havoc dropped to one knee, obviously drained and not only of mana. “Not supposed to use that for long periods of time.” He winced and Murmur watched him, activating her Mana Replenishment so he could recover some of his expenditure.
“I…” She checked herself, making sure she wasn’t overreaching with her own abilities, making sure she wasn’t just pushing her own wants onto them. “I didn’t realize. I thought I was just helping…”
“We’re allowed to feel pain. We’re allowed to be scared. We’re allowed to not want to do something.” Jinna’s tone had a hard edge, like one of his blades. “You can’t move people along by doing that, by making us forget, or not acknowledge our fear.”
“Yeah, I…” Murmur stood, water still dripping from her robe, her mind numb with the ricocheting emotions she’d been attempting to force onto others. How long had she been doing that? Sure, she knew when she tried to make them braver. She knew when she’d tried to persuade them to do things her way, but she hadn’t really meant to. Damn, with it basically second nature, how was she supposed to stop it?
A warm hand slipped around her waist, looping casually along her back. “I’ll thwap you if you do it again. Hell,” Sinister glanced down at Snowy, “I’m sure the wolf will help.”
“Yeah.” Murmur still didn’t know what to say. The waves of annoyance still rippled from her friends, back to her, right through her body. She could feel it. Experiencing the unwanted sensation of her own targeted emotional manipulation, however inadvertent or unintentional it had been, shocked her.
“Mur.” Sinister looked up at her.
Murmur looked away, unable to reconcile her own feelings with what she’d perhaps made her best friend do. Had she pushed Sinister into feeling for her? Had she manipulated the person who meant more to her in the world than almost anyone? The hyperventilation was coming again, the shortness of breath, the disbelief in herself. She closed her eyes, using Snowy’s head to steady herself.
A soft kiss on the corner of her mouth made Murmur open her eyes. She looked down at Sinister, whose eyes were twinkling.
“I can’t read minds, but I know you. And right about now you’re beating yourself up for taking advantage of me. You’ve never taken advantage of me in that way, Mur.” Sinister grinned in a very sinister way. “If anything, that pied piper has been me.”
Murmur felt the blush rising in her cheeks, the warmth in her face having nothing
to do with the Boon of Ice. She nodded sheepishly. “I’m so sorry.”
And then she turned to the others who’d come to confront her, who had taken on the burden and the risk to break through to her. What Havoc had done was risky; it could have backfired enormously, and with the realization of just what she could do with her abilities…Murmur wasn’t entirely sure it was wise to use them too much.
“Thank you. I am so sorry. I had no idea I was doing that. Well, I did, but I also didn’t. Like I just meant to help. I just wanted everyone to have fun, to win, and to not get down on themselves. But I can totally see now what I did, and why it didn’t work in the slightest. Not allowing you to feel for yourselves was fucking villain material, and I’m sorry.”
She paused, taking a breath and checking herself to make sure she wasn’t doing it again. “If I step out of line, smack me or something.”
“Will do.” Veranol seemed gruff, but a small smile of relief tugged at his lips. “We should probably get back now.”
Sinister slipped her hand into Murmur’s and squeezed. “I call not it.”
“What?” Havoc looked a bit better already, but he’d definitely taken a hit by casting that spell on Murmur.
The bloodmage laughed. “There is no way in hell I’m going to be the one to cast water breathing on everyone.”
Location Redacted
Brainwave Focus Study Laboratory
Subdivision of Military Brainwave Research Institution
Somnia Online Ululate - First Login
Day Twenty-Nine
If James hadn’t known he was back in his apartment lying down in a pod in his research area, he wouldn’t have believed it. The previous time he’d logged in had only been to test that it worked. He hadn’t paid attention to anything else. The virtual world wasn’t exactly as he’d imagined it. Its fabric was deceptively realistic.
His swanky headgear, courtesy of Michael, gave him access to a warlock class, already level forty. It wasn’t the sort of class he’d have chosen for himself. He liked to stab things if he played games. But spells were sort of like shooting things, so he’d get used to it. Besides, he wouldn’t be in the game too long. Just until he found out what he needed.