by K. T. Hanna
Murmur stumbled back as one of the resisting anemones barreled into her. To be more precise, tentacles jettisoned out and smashed into her. She doubled over, coughing with the impact. Each spot they hit hurt like acid was trying to eat through her gut. Her next stun caught the creature mid-strike, and Snowy leapt at the offending tentacles like he was fighting for his own life and not hers.
She moved quickly, yet felt sluggish. Just like the healing spell she knew Sinister had thrown her way felt more like a trickle than a full heal. She could feel every portion of her skin being knit back together. Murmur executed her stuns, still able to do that, but the sensation of her wounds healing set her teeth on edge.
“Petrification aftereffects,” Sinister shouted over the raid. “If you get hit by one of the tentacles, you need to chug an antidote immediately. We will heal you as we can, but without the antidote, we’re just burning mana.”
Murmur chugged one, and her health regenerated faster even as she threw out more stuns. Keeping her mind on the fight, she searched for Snowy, checking he was okay. Though he didn’t get hit by Petrification even once, she still worried about him.
She eyed her mana and that of the others. They were starting to get low. Lower than she wanted given the Anemomight still had fifty percent health left. They’d massacred almost half of the little buggers, but still, they came. It was like their numbers were solely there to wear the raid down.
Wait a second. Maybe that was it.
She tried again to leech from the Anemomight, and it didn’t work. She frowned, tossing a DoT onto the thing as well. Again, it gave her the error message. She kicked herself, almost missing the cooldown for her recast of one of the stuns. Taking a breath, she forced herself to think clearly.
“Is the wave ebbing at all?” Havoc muttered next to her.
“I don’t think so? Maybe.” Murmur was sure there were fewer of them. She reached out to her sensing net and realized that the small versions were still attached to the boss through what appeared to be a focal point. The little ones were a shield that helped make up its health, and the anchor appeared to be hidden in the middle of all of them. Letting her future self be worried about self-recrimination, she pushed her irritation aside and followed the link to the exact one.
Fluctuations in her net hampered her ability to track the anchor down, but finally she managed it. There was nothing overly different about it, which made her feel a tad better about having missed it initially. The same wash of almost-fluorescent colors, this one mimicked the perfect blood streaks that ran down the boss’s column. It was the only thing that stood out about it compared to all of the other ones.
Examining the link, the anchor was tied directly to Anemomight, so killing it, should kill a portion of the boss anyway. Besides, the worst that could happen was they had more of the monsters to kill, and they were already stuck with that anyway.
She ran through her spells in her mind, needed to stop that mana flow, the energy. With a thought to her wolf, she showed him what needed to be done. How that link needed to be severed. He left the current anemone he was mauling and shot away to the thick of the creatures. It was through this hub of a creature that the Anemomight controlled all the smaller ones, directing them intelligently to attack in groups and take down as many people as it could. Probably why it was in a type of stasis too.
Smart plan, easy enough to overlook at first. But every single one of the creatures protected that little one. She could feel it. The soft wave of defensiveness. Since she wasn’t interfering in her own powers anymore with that whole trying-to-force-everyone-to-just-do-what-she-wanted thing, it seemed her ability to sense, to hear, to feel, and maybe even to speak increased tenfold. She’d kick herself later. Future Murmur was going to hate past Murmur.
Snowy crept through like he was stealthed. She wasn’t sure how he seemed to walk through the water, but he did. Murmur couldn’t divert her attention for more than a couple of seconds; she could only hope she’d conveyed what needed to be done as thoroughly as she thought she had.
Resist!
A majority of your targets have resisted your current stun. Please be aware you will be their first target.
No. No. She didn’t want them to resist again. Opening her mouth to speak to Dansyn, she sighed with relief as his stun went off right then catching about two-thirds of the ones who’d resisted her own. Luck was on her side, however briefly.
Warning.
Stuns have been used too often against the mini anemomights, and they have developed a resistance to this type of spell. Please be aware that your stuns will have diminishing returns from hereon in.
“Fuck. Stuns have diminishing returns,” Murmur muttered over the raid chat. She could feel the tension rise in each individual person. There was no way to ignore that ripple through her nets. Thoughts and words flittered through her mind that were not her own. Worry, determination, anger. All of the emotions, and all of the curse words. It was like she’d freed her mind up to do what it was supposed to.
The shorter duration of the stuns was immediately obvious as soon as she cast the next one. Being the shorter stun, it barely held even a moment. They’d killed around two-thirds of the monsters so far. So they were doing well, but it was taking too much time and costing too much mana.
And then it was like she could feel him. Feel it, see it through whatever connection they had as Snowy pushed past two of the normal minis, avoiding the Petrification ability by the hairs of his coat. He sprang at the connecting tentacle, his mouth open in a snarl. She’d never realized his teeth were so sharp, nor that there were so many of them. He chomped down with what could only have been a special move, because it cut through the thick and sticky appendage that fed life to the Anemomight with ease.
The tentacle flailed immediately before Snowy could even let go, and it picked him up with it as it thrashed in agony. The only good thing was that the wolf wasn’t flung against hard stone walls or floors. Maybe underwater zones were good for something after all.
The rest of the smaller ones withered, their defeat coming easily now. And as they dropped, the Anemomight squealed with rage and pain as its own Petrification came to an end. Its health plummeted to thirty-two percent, and Murmur heaved a huge sigh of relief.
Not like their opponent suddenly died. The fight would still be hard and take time. She tapped it with Mana Drain. She leeched with with Mana Theft. It’d be touch and go for a bit considering their mana levels, but the raid should emerge victorious.
Somnia Online
Continent Tarishna: Vahrir Marsh
Day Thirty
Telvar stood, with Emilarth at his side, gazing up at the massive structure that housed the Dungeon of Vahrir. Belius scouted the outskirts as he tried figure out just what had happened to his gate guardian.
“Guess you lost that, too,” Telvar snapped, realizing immediately that he was doing so. Not that Bel didn’t deserve it.
“Look, Tel.” Belius stopped and half glared at Telvar. The other half of his expression was almost unreadable. Like he was sad and yet angry, but still regretful. “I shouldn’t have done what I did the way I did it. But I stand by my decision to help you gain that resistance. You never listen to me. What was I supposed to do?”
He ended the plea on a plaintive note, his expression beseeching, and Telvar felt a little tug at his mind. Like a portion of his programming was telling him to see it from his brother’s perspective.
“I guess I have a habit of discounting your theories…” he admitted begrudgingly.
Belius’s face lit up, as much as a locus could anyway, and he shook his head letting out a self-deprecating laugh. “You really do. I got frustrated and just acted when I should have insisted you listen to me first.”
“To be fair,” Emilarth interrupted, “that probably wouldn’t have worked either.”
Telvar raised an eyebrow ridge and looked at his sister. “Whose side are you on?”
“Mine,” she answered without hesi
tation.
Telvar chuckled. “True, I guess. I will do my best to listen and evaluate any information you have for me on its merits alone from here on in. Sound good?”
“Sounds better than not listening.” Belius nodded. He sighed and squared his shoulders. “And I won’t spring anymore coding-altering surprises on you without your consent.”
“Sounds like a plan!” Emilarth exclaimed, her tone happy.
“I’m still allowed to be a bit miffed.” Telvar insisted, feeling like he still had some resentment built up.
Belius nodded. “Of course!”
“Now, let’s get down to the important stuff. Why did you make this place so…ugly anyway?” Emilarth wrinkled her delicate feline nose as if affronted by the smell. Level fifty mobs roamed in this particular area and paid her no attention whatsoever. One of the perks of being an AI in non-combat mode.
Belius was too exasperated to give her the reaction he normally would have. In fact, Telvar had never seen his brother so put out about one of his creations. Now they’d talked most of their difficulties out, he felt a little bit sorry for his brother.
“It shouldn’t have moved. I know Fable didn’t kill it, so technically they didn’t complete the dungeon.” Belius’s rage contorted his alien features so much he seemed terrifying.
Telvar attempted to calm him down. “Well, they didn’t go through the front, so, technically they finished the dungeon itself.”
Belius glared at him, but visibly took a calming breath. “He’s just not here. If that idiot fucked with my set up, I’ll kill him.” Belius was fuming, and Telvar stepped away almost involuntarily.
He realized a few things all at once. That Belius really did mean well, he just wasn’t good at going about getting his point across. That Emilarth found humor in everything, perhaps especially even her brother’s embarrassment, and Telvar wasn’t really angry at his brother anymore.
“It’s okay. We’re united, so we have that up on them, anyway. Fable and Murmur will make it through the end of this.” Telvar sounded a tad more confident than he felt. He’d checked on his dungeon a couple of times, and while he could still access it and keep an eye, there was something interfering with his ability to undo any of the strange mutations that occurred.
The virus had crept into his most prized creation, and he wasn’t happy about it.
“I know,” Belius muttered while he kicked the ground. For once not in caster robes but in fighting leathers, the lean locus blinked his dark eyes at the horizon. “I’ve wasted enough of our time looking for it, and we really don’t have that much. Let’s get on with the delivery.”
He made as if to leave on his own, and Emilarth came out of her mood long enough to touch his arm gently. “Best to stay together. Too many things are in flux and too many things have been changed. We can’t be certain there aren’t traps. Safety in numbers and all.”
Belius smiled tightly and nodded. They all knew the anti-virus needed to be delivered throughout the world. They couldn’t afford to release it and hope one point of origin would suffice. But it was certain that if they hadn’t already, Michael’s little puppets would notice. This might not be the quickest way, but if they traveled separately, then it was easier to ambush them.
Strength in numbers and Somnia might just survive.
Storm Entertainment
Somnia Online Division
Game Development Offices - Shayla’s Office
Early Day Thirty
Shayla watched as Laria and David bent their heads over her other desk. It reminded her of days back in college, when they’d met in that damned game and then realized they lived close to one another. They’d been lucky. So many people were situated so much farther from one another. Still, she sighed, and turned her attention back to her own portion of the work.
This mess was so far outside her usual scope of duties she was surprised Davenport tolerated it. But then, Somnia was bringing in a good amount of cash; she thought he was hedging bets that his people would get everything worked out in a timely matter and leave none the wiser. A sickening sensation in her stomach told her it wouldn’t end that neatly, though. AIs becoming sentient, headsets needing very little modification to tap into the word in ways she couldn’t even begin to understand. Some abilities leaking through into reality.
That was a nope out right there. It felt like they were on the edge of the twilight zone, and she knew consumers wouldn’t be okay with that. Everything about their world was breaking apart. She’d thrown so much into this career, especially this game.
“Shay?” David interrupted her train of thought. “Stop beating yourself up. It’ll be fine.”
She raised an eyebrow at him and nodded her head toward Laria, who hadn’t looked up from what she was doing, obviously engrossed.
“I’m right,” he said, giving her a wink, and then he reached out and took a donut from the pile they had sitting in the middle of the table.
Shayla rolled her eyes and got back to work delivering the anti-virus into the main system files. She had to move delicately and make sure she was loading them in the correct areas. It was dangerous without testing it on non-live servers. Hell, it was risky to do at all. Especially since they had to make sure it didn’t impact the playability of the environment. But they didn’t have time to do more testing. In fact, she was quite certain they had even less time than she’d originally thought.
Numbers danced in front of her eyes, brackets and equations and coding and everything that made her vision swim until she was sure her brain would bleed out of her ears. But it didn’t, and it wouldn’t.
Just a thought from her mind, and the anti-virus would launch. The AIs were already moving around making sure it would also work from inside the completed coding via anchor spots. Shayla didn’t completely understand how they were doing anything from within the world, but she was positive they knew what they were doing.
“You know you just have to say the word now, right?” Laria sat on her desk, chomping on a donut with a mischievous smile on her face. The deep worry lines were gone, like this bit of hope had made all the difference to her.
“Yeah, trust me, I know.” Shayla found it easier to smile herself with her friend so infectious. “Look…you realize this could blow up in our faces, right?”
Laria shrugged. “I’m okay with that. If we do nothing, it’ll be worse. Either way, we’re probably doomed.” She said it in such a cheerful manner that Shayla had to laugh.
“Well, I guess we’ve got nothing to lose, then.” Shayla leaned forward, putting her elbows on the desk and let her head fall into her hands. This was it. Either she blew the servers up immediately, she was going to have to wait and see how much damage they did, or the worst-case scenario — nothing happened at all. Frankly, she wasn’t entirely sure which of the options she preferred. But it was better to get it over and done with anyway.
Closing her eyes, she allowed the system to release the files and activate them.
Slowly, she opened them. Nothing in the office was smoking, so that was probably a positive sign, right? “It’s done.”
Laria nodded slowly, and David sat there sipping on his probably cold by now coffee. Shayla felt like she should feel better about this, like everything should be falling into place, but instead, it was more like they were waiting for the clock to tick down on a bomb in the system.
Loot from the Anemomight was better than Murmur expected. Usually Fable got most of theirs at the end of the dungeon because the quest finished and compounded their rewards, but this had been a straight-out non-riddle-based dungeon fight for once, and it yielded only a few nice pieces of armor. They were better upgrades for the other guilds, and so Risk and Masha appeared momentarily mollified. Or at least to not want to melt her very bones with their gazes.
She glanced down at her own gear, perfectly happy with it. Both Mellow and Cardishan made that weird potion that fixed and cleaned things and left them with that awesome buff. Still, though. Murmur hate
d sitting around after a boss fight. She wanted to get moving straight away. It was eating up all of her self-control to not just nudge the entire raid into getting their shit together.
But she took a breath and centered herself. She shouldn’t be acting out like that; after all, she’d fused with the system, and if she paid attention to her own emotional and mental vibrations as they echoed through the system, she could feel elements of Somnia just out of her reach, begging her to get in tune with them.
“I’m proud of you.” Veranol was suddenly beside her, but she’d felt him approach. If she let herself float, she could feel every single presence in the world. It was almost overwhelming.
Snowy seemed to be laughing at her with the way his tongue lolled out of his mouth as she searched for words to answer Veranol. “Thanks?” She eventually chose. He’d seemed pretty bloody angry at her earlier, not that she could blame him. She’d been a fool. Even if some of it was due to getashi poisoning as both she and Sinister suspected.
“I mean it. I can see you thinking about it. You’ve never been all that good at hiding your emotions from your expression. It’s just taken me a little longer to get used to it with the whole alien features thing happening.” He grinned at her, and Murmur felt the tension loosening in her shoulders.
“Anyway, I just wanted to say that I’m proud of your for recognizing what you were doing, and for making a conscientious effort to refrain from doing it again.” He pushed himself away from the wall she was leaning against and nodded. “Yep. We knew what you were doing, but sometimes I think getting caught up in the raid and your own good intentions that you just lost sight for a bit. Remember, we don’t expect you to be able to right everything at once. It is a skill that begs to be abused. But I’m really glad you’re putting in as much effort as you are.”