by K. T. Hanna
He also needed to figure out a way to solve Somnia’s conundrum. She was worried about people—especially people in the outside world who had the improved headsets she’d requested—getting infected. Not only had none of them anticipated the glitch that resulted from Murmur’s headset, but they hadn’t expected a sentient world to emerge that had a damned conscience. While Telvar could feel guilt, it didn’t seem to affect him the same way it did the world.
Which probably came down to the fact that her entire existence had been triggered by Murmur’s merge with the world.
He rested his ethereal head in his hypothetical hands. If he’d had a real desk, he might have smacked his forehead against it. Still, though, he had to wait for Laria to get there. She’d been in the middle of something when he’d contacted them, and especially right now he was aware that leaving a task partially unfinished was a very unwise choice.
“Sorry!”
He heard the words at the same time as he realized entry into the room had been triggered. The sigh of relief he felt the need to expel didn’t have anywhere to go in this form. But he tried his best. “It’s okay. I have some time.”
“What did you need to tell us?” Shayla sounded breathless as well. Had they run here?
When it came to telling them what he needed to, Rav actually felt slightly nervous. “We have confirmation that the final boss no longer exists as he was programmed. He’s been taken over by Michael’s shards and has effectively become a digitized version of Michael’s worst traits.”
He paused, allowing that to sink in for a bit. The image of Laria he could see registered as shocked, then worried, and then determined.
So he continued. “Riasli delivered James to him, and Somnia located and sealed the fissure so Riasli doesn’t bring anyone else to him. We surmise that he is using the something from the game or the headset power to draw on, so Michael’s strength is increased. He doesn’t need to be stronger. Even with the anti-virus, the ripples have spread to affect people without the special headsets.”
“No,” Laria interrupted. “That’s not quite right. We have James here, and he—or Michael, because it’s an older headset—definitely tampered with it.”
“What?” While he wished he’d have known it earlier, Rav couldn’t help but be relieved at the news. Maybe that meant no normal people were in danger yet, only the ones they knew about.
“He’s…in the same state Wren was now, for the most part, anyway.” Laria sounded sad, and she hugged herself as if she was trying to get warm. “We are monitoring him just to be safe.”
That spun a whole new light on the entire situation. Rav ran through several computations and possibility options. With the factor that James’s headset was indeed tampered with, it made the inevitable outcome a lot less dire. Still bad, but perhaps salvageable. “I think we might be able to manage it, then. Maybe.”
He hadn’t liked their odds, but now he could see a glimmer of hope. But first he had to see if he could track Riasli—otherwise, everything might fall apart.
Mellow reached into their bag of tricks and made light of the putrid-smelling, vile red substance that stained everyone. Murmur could have sworn the stuff was eating through some of the metal armor in the group, but Mellow’s concoction managed to make it all disappear. Good thing, really, even if it couldn’t be cast again for another hour. Hopefully everyone would avoid it next time.
Murmur paused as Devlish faced off against their opponent. She really hoped the vomit was interruptible. Her robes were her one vanity.
The creature roared and Murmur balked at its name, trying to make sense of it in her head. Htailog screamed at them again, but this time he got interrupted by Karn. At least it was her if the smirk on her face was anything to go by. Devlish called out to the raid. “Interrupt rotation. Karn. Jirald. Jinna. Me. Rashlyn.”
Murmur was a tad worried that he’d put Jinna into the lineup, but then the lacerta didn’t know the extent to which Murmur was fairly certain Jinna was infected and not being himself.
She wondered if Jirald had attempted to infect anyone else from her guild and hoped she wouldn’t have to find out the hard way. If that was even how this worked. Maybe the rogue had slipped something onto their armor, or into their in-game food that buffed them.
We might have a problem. Somnia’s comment sounded abrupt.
Is it with this dungeon? she snapped back, not unkindly, just a bit impatient due to finding herself in the middle of a battle.
Perhaps. We think Riasli gathered up James and deposited him with Michael. James has a headset very similar to yours, but he`s not an enchanter, nor is he attached to me.
You sound worried. Murmur made sure her stun was ready to go should Jinna miss his turn. There wasn’t much she could do if he did, or if Htailog evaded, but she’d try.
Well, you’re probably going to have to face all of them.
What do you mean “all of them”? Murmur muttered to her mind as she jumped the Tailwhip and cursed at herself for not having made her standing position out of range of the damned appendage to begin with.
I mean Riasli. Michael. James…maybe.
Like…in a monster way?
Sort of. Somnia seemed hesitant.
Is there any way this can wait until I’ve finished this monstrosity’s attempt to eat me and my friends? Murmur knew she sounded angrier than she felt, but to be fair, she was trying to track a plethora of things at once, and Somnia wasn’t helping.
Oh. Good point. I’ll come to you when he’s dead.
At least she’d said when and not if. And hadn’t mentioned wiping, because Murmur had enough of that already in this zone. Going on what, four days of little to no sleep? She was getting tired. Even grabbing the four to six hours every day or so they’d done before was more than this.
Her faculties weren’t completely there, and she knew she wasn’t the only one having trouble with her reaction times.
The red vomit had only fallen in an arc around the front of the monster. So when, of course, Jinna failed to interrupt, the melee classes had about one second to jump as far outside that radius as possible while the less agile classes ran back.
Only Etriad and Dalvin got any of it. While it slowed them terribly, it did little to eat through their robes and only seemed to scar the metal of their jewelry somewhat, lowering its durability.
It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but having two of the highest damage dealers casting like snails in a mushroom patch infested with badgers and snakes wasn’t helping their job of killing Htailog.
Tail Whip was behind them, they’d figured out how to get out of the arc of red vomit, and Htailog was already at eighty percent health. What was with the amount of tail attacks in this zone? When he hit it, Murmur wished she’d stop thinking to herself that each fight might not be so bad, because it was obviously the trigger to make it just that much worse.
She hadn’t noticed the black spikes that went all down his spine. In fact, she’d not really taken a look at his back at all, if she was honest. And she really wished she had.
Because when Htailog hit eighty percent, he swirled faster than a creature of his size had any right to do, and as he did, his tail and spine rippled, shooting out all of his spines in a wide arc and catching Exbo, Farin (one of Spiral’s rangers), Masha, and Sinister with clean, painful shots.
Spine Shot has been successful. Poison damage for one hundred and eighty-seven every tick.
A glowing blue light emanated from the turtle who’d sat silent until now. Sheladrios had mentioned that he didn’t have much power yet because they’d only removed a couple of the locks, but his heal spread over the raiders, immediately replenishing those who’d been used as pin cushions, and rejuvenated everyone else.
Murmur glanced up and saw a debuff hanging over her head. That heal couldn’t be used for another ninety seconds. While she was fairly certain they’d be fine like that, it made sense why he hadn’t used it before.
She glanced ove
r at Sheladrios and sent out a thought of thank you. She wasn’t sure if he could hear her, but she’d like to think he’d have been happy if he could.
The heal wasn’t just a heal, though; it effectively removed the spikes embedded in the victims’ bodies. Htailog didn’t like that, and he roared like the caged beast Sheladrios should have been.
She liked this type of fight. Thinking on their feet, learning the fight as they went.
No more interrupts were missed, and Htailog’s health began to go down quicker than she’d expected. His Tail Whip was fierce, but now that they knew the tricks, rather easy to avoid.
Still, though, his screeching and his normal attacks bit into Devlish’s health, and the dread knight needed a chunk of focused healing to keep him up. Which left the healers a bit pressed to ensure the rest of the raid’s health was topped off. One of the things Murmur did not miss about healing was the stress.
The Spine Shot was the one thing she couldn’t peg on Htailog. It didn’t come back at sixty percent, or even fifty. It hit again at forty-five percent, and she took one of the spines to her left shoulder. The pain shocked through her system, biting clear through and cutting off movement of that arm. It felt like it was starting to rot from the inside out, like the poison was about to destroy her. But Sheladrios was there with his heal, because more than ninety seconds had passed.
The healing spell felt unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. Like a cleansing of the wound, of her very soul. If she looked, she thought scars on her real body had might even be gone when she logged out. Serenity overcame her, and she and the other members who’d felt its effects hunkered down to burn Htailog.
Their DPS boosted through sheer determination. Or at least, that sounded cool. A lot of that determination was helped by saying fuck it and using cooldowns. It was a good thing too, because they managed to avoid another Spine Shot. As soon as Htailog dropped, the other wall emitted furious roars that almost sounded like a loud squawk. It was high pitched enough that it hurt her ears. She wasn’t looking forward to what came out of that wall either.
Looting Htailog’s corpse, she grabbed the key and ran over to the turtle.
Sheladrios blinked slowly and spoke much like Murmur imagined a sloth might. “Thank you. Leg first, please.” He seemed old and tired, and perhaps wise too, but he’d not yet said much to establish the latter. She hurried, unlocking the massive metal loop around his legs, and tried to pry it off.
Risk batted her hands away and said. “I’ll do this. Sometimes strength in a character is a plus.” He offered her a very small grin before focusing on breaking the rusted ring apart. She heard it crack as she made her way back to the group and could feel the subtle vibrations that came from Sheladrios’s footsteps underneath the frantic beating of whatever was behind the other wall.
Finally, a hole appeared in the stone. A massive beak shoved itself through, pecking on the sides of the wall and ripping it apart. The beak had to be made of steel. She shuddered to contemplate letting that mouth get to any of them.
And as the wall came down completely with a massive kick of one of the bird’s legs, she realized it wasn’t just one mouth they’d have to avoid, but multiple.
The creature stood about fifteen feet tall but had three heads all bobbing around each other. One was grey, one red, and one black. Murmur tested her sensing net but got nothing from it but anger. A lot of anger. She frowned as Devlish cast Hatred on it and pulled its attention to himself. But only the red head stayed focused on him. The others kept wavering about, eyeing everyone in the raid. And she knew, deep down, that wasn’t a good thing.
Finally, she moved back to where Havoc and the healers stood, in the shadow of Sheladrios. He sat there like a giant statue, his age all too apparent to them all.
Kyriel the Mighty has let out a Disorientating Screech.
You have resisted Disorienting Screech due to your Mental Acuity.
Others have not been so lucky.
Murmur sighed and blanket removed all of the ill effects from her raid. That was going to eat into her mana pool pretty strongly.
“You may draw mana from me.” Sheladrios spoke softly behind her. Or at least, he probably thought it was soft, but his voice rumbled, and the whole raid heard him.
Murmur smiled a thank you, and concentrated on Kyriel. “Okay, birdie. Here we go,” she muttered in front of her, and Snowy’s mouth opened in a very wolfy smile as he darted in to hamstring the mob.
“Dodge the heads,” Devlish shouted out. “Kyriel has Beak Peck with the black one. And Laser Eyes with the grey one. Alternating stuns.”
So interrupts it was. “Karn, Jirald, Jinna, Devlish,” she called out. “On the black head.”
After a quick look around, she picked the others. “Risk, Rash, Merlin, Beastial: on the grey.” That should allow them all time for their stuns to reset with some margin of error allowed.
Her own stuns weren’t good as interrupts on large bosses. Melee stuns were much better for that. She watched as the stuns rotated themselves like well-oiled machines as the mages allowed blizzards and firestorms to come raining down on the huge bird. And she watched in fascination again as the rangers loosed their never-ending stream of arrows.
Games and their lack of obeying any normal sense of rules. Wasn’t that what made them magical?
The red head that Devlish fought against didn’t appear to have any abilities. Murmur frowned, because it had to, and given its coloring, she thought it might even be fire.
She spoke over guild instead of raid, needing to know. Dev, has it done anything yet?
Devlish: Not the red head. I still haven’t seen what it’s capable of. Maybe it’s just meant to distract me?
Veranol: That would be highly unusual if so. Keep an eye out.
Devlish: No shit, Ver.
Veranol: Sorry. That was a bit off…
Murmur kept her eyes trained on the red head, waiting for it to make a move.
But its focus was solely on the tank. That’s all it did, focus on him like it was stalking him, determined to kill him. The aura around him was filled with killing intent, like a bomb just waiting to go off.
Fuck. That had to be it, right? It was a bomb, and when they got to a certain point in the fight, or else a certain percentage of health, it was going to explode. Her gut tingled again in that irritating way that made her think she’d either eaten something really bad, or else, the universe was trying to tell her something.
“Slow down on the red one,” she yelled. “That’s Dev’s target. Concentrate on grey first, and then black.”
She could see Devlish stiffen for a moment, the red head hanging nicely at twenty-five percent. Then his shoulders slumped and he spoke over guild.
You’re going to have to brink-of-death me again, aren’t you?
Murmur grimaced. Yeah. Sorry about that. And it’s Forestall Death. Get it right.
“I might be able to help too,” the large amphibious reptile behind them grumbled. Murmur wasn’t sure if it was wrong to want to hug him, but she really wanted to. She also randomly really wanted a pet turtle now.
“Excellent,” she said, hoping he heard her.
Just then, one of the beak pecks resisted its interrupt and almost cleaved Karn in two. The scream that came from the young rogue was terrifying as her health dropped to five percent. Jinna stood over her, a strange ghost of his usual self. The expression on his face was almost as scary as the injury Karn was being healed for. He looked nothing like the healer Murmur had played against for however many games and more like Jirald the assassin every single second.
She had to shake herself away from the vision and call out orders over guild, no longer giving a shit about Jinna’s perceived feelings. “Dansyn, replace Jinna in the interrupt rotation, please.” Her words were calm and commanding, but only because she managed to suppress the rage she felt.
Sinister gave her a quick smile before returning her attention to the fight. Maybe that meant she had
n’t given the whole raid a dose of her own anger.
Most of the rest of the fight went off without much interference. Murmur barked out commands in a militant fashion, and even Veranol shot her a concerned glance. She tried to give him a tight smile, tried to make herself convince herself that it wasn’t her fault. No one should ever betray another raid member just because they were feeling petty. Maybe this time the creature had resisted, but it seemed awfully coincidental that Jinna’s turn in the interrupt rotation had failed. She had no proof, though, and no proof that Jirald had done anything…yet. But she would. Eventually.
So, in the end, even with keeping all her emotions under wraps and not trying to coerce people into doing what she felt was best, she’d still managed to hurt two of her raid members.
“You know,” Havoc said from next to her, his eyes still fully focused on the battle, “if I were able to read locus expressions as well as I can human, which I’m not saying I can, then I’d say you’re in the middle of blaming yourself in a bit of a spiral of doom.”
“What?” She looked back at the fight, more than a bit put out by his statement. “You’re talking nonsense.”
“Am I, though? I mean, we’re fighting a big three-headed chicken here. You can be honest.” His face didn’t even flicker in the direction of a smile, and yet Murmur found herself laughing.
“Fine. Maybe a bit,” she admitted, not really wanting to.
“Yet…you don’t need to, you know.” He grimaced as an eyebeam got through, hitting three of the melee fighters in its path with about five hundred damage each. “You can only do what you can control. You should really keep that in mind. You do not control others, as much as you are capable of it, because you are aware of your abilities and are essentially a good person.”
“Any of you would do the same,” she said, blushing slightly, that whole compliment thing still strange for her.