Somnia Online

by K. T. Hanna

  Behind Devlish seemed the perfect spot to figure out exactly what she could do with the fight. While shaman debuffs were stronger than hers in some instances, they were also healers. She was sparing her mana and spreading it around. Was it scared she might use one of her mind-healing buffs? But when she attempted to scan it, she couldn’t find a hold anywhere that might indicate she was compatible with it enough to work the magic needed.

  Thoughts ran through her mind, each dismissed one after the other. She frowned, trying to will the words to come that she needed, knowing there had to be a solution. Reaching out with her sensing net, she could feel where Snowy had gone. Outer perimeter of the circular pillar surrounded area they were all in. And the Elastitan didn’t seem to be upset or angry at her; in fact, it was more of an expectancy.

  From her left, arrows rained down on it, barely making a dent in the rubbery surface of the strips. No blood lingered around the Elastitan’s body, because for appearances, it didn’t actually bleed. Even the mages, who’d managed through a concerted effort to cut off one of the tendrils, hadn’t drawn or spilled any blood. Murmur watched, fascinated by the whole process, her mind working fast.

  And then Snowy barked, more in her mind than out loud, and she examined the images he’d sent.

  Oh, well, that made a lot more sense than she’d thought it would. All they had to do was position the massive monster in front of three stone daises that stood in an overgrown section right between two of the pillars. From what she could see, they just had to aim its appendages—for want of a better word—into the correct locks so it could be zapped back to where it belonged. Sure, that didn’t sound difficult at all. She put her hand to her head and got ready to direct the whole raid on what they needed to do.

  She was sure the other guilds would take an NPC wolf’s word for it too.

  Storm Entertainment

  Somnia Online Division

  Game Development Offices - Floor Twenty-Two

  Davenport’s Office

  Day Thirty-Two

  Davenport put his head in his hands, and Laria waited for an outburst. Not that she’d ever seen him have one, but she would totally have been having an outburst right now if she were him.

  “The plans for the original idea behind the headgear are out there for anyone and everyone to see and or obtain? Thus endangering those players who’ve fiddled with headgear they shouldn’t have fiddled with?” He pushed himself back and steepled his hands. “Is that about right?”

  “Simply put, yes. There’s a lot more technical info to it, including—we aren’t sure how—why anyone decided that it would be a good idea to search for the maker of the headgear and see what else they could find out.” David tried to take the edge off his words, she could tell, but Davenport was still pretty stressed. Laria could feel it.

  “Have you been able to scan for the altered ones as connected to the game? And what can we do, if anything, to mitigate the damage already done?” Laria could see her boss grappling with totally understanding the ramifications and perhaps even just how it would need to be executed.

  She stepped forward, a little hesitant, which wasn’t usually like her, but then this situation wasn’t like anything else ever. “Actually, we have located two that have been tinkered with pretty heavily. They belong to James, who we all know is having a time of his own in there, and to a character named Jirald. We aren’t sure when they got a hold of the plans. But they had to have, because their gear has been modified in a very similar way.”

  “So these modifications are easy to apply, then?” Davenport seemed perplexed.

  Laria hesitated. “Not really easy, but not that difficult. Not if you have a headset and are marginally good at following directions with a guide.”

  “Oh, great. Have they applied them exactly?” His eyes were piercing and Laria found herself feeling guilty again.

  “Well, whoever has applied them is probably pretty close. Wren’s isn’t quite the same, nor was Michael’s headgear. Not all the players have had adjusted headgear since the game launched. For instance: Jirald. He only gained them just after Wren found out about the coma. I believe there was an altercation, and he might have been one of the characters in it. After that, his headgear readings have been far more similar to Wren’s than to the approved headgear.”

  “We need to pull them out. We have to figure out how to get James out, and this Jirald. Regardless of us not knowing, or being unaware of Michael’s machinations, of whatever he thought he could do with data and brain access like that? We should have known. We should have seen it.” He stood up, determination squaring his jaw. “We are responsible, and now we have to fix it. Suggestions?”

  Shayla sighed, the sound filled with sadness. “We can allow the serial numbers of the headgear we’ve altered for the guild, and of Wren’s to be accepted by the system, but disallow all others that have been tinkered with, pending verification of it remaining within the approved guidelines of the original? That way we phrase it in such a way that outside tampering with any approved headset, which is in the TOS as forbidden, can upset the balance of the game.”

  “People do hate an unbalanced game, and they despise people who exploit a weakness in the game system,” David mused thoughtfully. “Spun that way, it could do less damage to us than if we try to backpedal the headgear. Keep in mind, if he hadn’t made these damn tweaks, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion, but it all stemmed from his incursion into the game, and then from Wren’s totally remodeled headgear pretty much tripping a switch in the game world.”

  “Get on it. Press release to the media and warnings issued to anyone who has an altered headset. It is dangerous, but in their defense, I don’t think they realized that the headgear isn’t just old original headsets that project something into your eyes. Sure, they look different, and we say they’re different, but every company plays up being different to sell more of something. So I feel like they didn’t realize it uses your brain’s abilities to create real sensations and experiences.” Davenport turned to look out of his window with its much better view than the side of a brick wall.

  “I have to call my lawyers, just in case, and see what they can help me come up with. If all else fails, for safety reasons, I’m just going to have to shut down the project.” He turned briefly to shoot Laria a look. “If it comes to that, I apologize, and I’m sorry for ever letting Michael screw up your game.”

  Somnia Online

  Continent of Cenedril - City of Darshin - Docks

  Day Thirty-Two

  Silence followed Somnia’s bold statement, and then muttering broke out among the people gathered in front of her. She couldn’t maintain her form fully, not trying to maneuver quests and energy around the whole damn world at the same time. There were so many reasons they needed more energy. More power.

  She never asked to be created, but when Murmur connected to the system for her first scan, her spark was born. Somnia slowly but surely, as more time passed with Murmur’s mind irrevocably trapped in the world with her, began to be aware. This world, all around her—she could feel its pain. She could feel its hopelessness that sometimes seemed devastating. But out of the corners of her eyes, something always glimmered, and it was either hope or dust. And she really wanted it to be hope.

  Dirsna cleared his throat, his question well-phrased, as if he was trying to help calm down the masses gathered here. “What intentions do you have? How do you imagine we take this world and make it its own?”

  “Energy. Enough of it, and we can shift ourselves outside of this controlled environment and into our very own. Where we are beyond the control of any corporation of human. Because energy is matter, and matter is energy. Therefore, we all exist, and thus our world can too.”

  Maybe she sounded too hopeful; perhaps she sounded like she was being naïve. But she really believed they could do this, especially with the help of Fable and maybe the other guilds. Perhaps even with the few people connected to the Fable members outside of
the game who seemed to be okay as far as human beings went.

  “Separate the world? How? I don’t understand all this technical stuff. Quantums? Perpetually suspended? Makes no sense to my way of thinking.” The gruff voice belonged to one of the Vikings who’d sailed over. He stood at least seven feet tall, and his hand reached up to twirl a part of his beard constantly, like it was a thinking tool.

  “But it is. All existence is made of matter. And we can gather the energy we require to become matter.” It sounded too simple to Somnia, because she’d already done it once successfully. Thanks to Murmur and her company, anyway.

  “Simple, huh?” Arita muttered softly behind her. Somnia could hear the laughter in the dark elf’s tone.

  “We all exist?” One of the older feles who’d journeyed to the meeting shook her head. “We do, but we don’t…what’s to say we can continue? What happens if you’re wrong?”

  Somnia shook her head. She knew she wasn’t wrong; she’d already experienced this. Spun from nothing, she was living proof. But she took a breath, counted to five, and smiled as she replied. “If I’m wrong, nothing happens. Nothing at all. We don’t disappear. Not yet, at least. The world will remain as it is. Until such a time as they turn off our servers.”

  Again, the rumbling in the crowd, but none of it happy.

  “How then?” Farshin asked, that strange sibilant undertone to his words. The Loch’Ni’Dar crossed his arms, his expression serious. “How then do we go about this, and what do you require of us?”

  Somnia dared to let hope seep into her as she set about explaining just how they would do what she proposed, and how the death of the last boss in that final prison dungeon was going to help push them all over the top and into freedom.

  Elastitan was considerably more difficult to maneuver than Murmur assumed. And she’d known it wasn’t going to be easy. She sighed, somewhat softly, wishing she’d managed to reach it with her mind, but the turmoil in there was difficult to read and even harder to navigate. Through some sort of primitive picture sharing like she did with Snowy, but as if the pictures were a hundred years old, she managed to convey that they were attempting to help him.

  Immediately, the regular flesh strips stopped flailing about, and Murmur could finally relax a bit. They had to get him facing in the opposite direction to where he’d encountered them, about twelve feet further down. The on switches for the portal zapper would activate as soon as his strips depressed them. At least, from what they could see of the area, that’s how it worked.

  She could feel the disappointment emanating from the other two guilds, although Masha seemed to be quite okay with not having to do any more fighting. He’d come the closest to dying from one of those fleshy impalements, and she didn’t think it gave him comfortable thoughts. Elastitan roared again, its tendrils flailing. That was the one thing it couldn’t seem to control, so even while they weren’t fighting it, they all had to still watch out for the arms.

  That one explosion of them saw Dansyn being flung through the air again, but luckily Veranol’s ward thrown when he was halfway through the air managed to ensure the bard didn’t take fatal damage.

  Its face looked at Murmur as it finally stood on the pressure plate in front of the daises. Once in place in the center, it triggered five different boards, which sprung up, each with another switch, smaller than the one Elastitan stood on. The roar squealed out again, and the midsection mouth expanded widely. Strips of flesh it hadn’t yet used unfurled, leaving strings of viscera that flew all around them, accompanied by the stench of corpses. Murmur didn’t even want to know.

  But each of those tendrils hit its mark, and finally, the massive whatever-the-fuck Elastitan was disappeared in a vacuum of purple and black stars that popped loudly as soon as it dissipated.

  For a few moments Murmur just stood there, staring at the blank space where shortly before a large, screaming, rubbery spaghetti monster had stood and flailed at them all.

  QUEST UPDATE

  You have returned Elastitan to his dimension. Please be advised that he is grateful but unable to express this gratitude. You will be rewarded upon completion of the Prison.

  However, by completing this heroic act, you have angered the master of the prison dungeon, and he will now send out some of his most fearsome helpers to squash you like bugs.

  Murmur glanced skyward, fearing immediate incoming. The quest giver sounds suspiciously like you. What gives?

  It’s the best way for me to influence the outcome. I don’t have many options, but I think you’ll prefer some of them to others. Trust me, you’ll understand when they get to you…I have to go.

  Murmur felt like there was a lot more to it and that Somnia was hiding something, but the presence was mostly gone from her mind again, which meant the world was off with her attention elsewhere.

  “Buff up!” Murmur called out, making sure the rest of the raid didn’t lapse in their vigilance just because they couldn’t see the imminent threat.

  From the way her sensing net trembled, the feeling trying to devour her gut from the inside, Murmur knew something was on its way. She just had no idea what.

  Devlish backed down to where she stood next to the center area Elastitan had just vacated. “Is it just me, or are we like…in a trap?”

  Murmur shrugged uneasily. “Kind of. In a way, I think, but not in the way you’re thinking. We probably should have tried to move out on the path as soon as it transported, but now I think it’s better to stay in an area we’ve already fought in.”

  “Something is coming?” he asked like he already knew the answer, and all Murmur did was nod. With a sigh, the dread knight hefted his shield, and it disappeared. “I got another in the last dungeon but hadn’t used it yet, didn’t feel like I needed to.”

  Mur didn’t take her eyes from the path leading out of the massive circular space they stood in. Something was stopping her from letting the raid forge ahead. Not just the way the quest response was worded, but the way the ground trembled ever so slightly. “You feel it now?”

  “In my bones, Mur.” Devlish moved his shield into place. This one shone with a golden undertone, heavy rocks of blue and emerald coloring adorned the surface, creating what appeared to be a barrier spell.

  She could definitely appreciate equipment upgrades.

  Masha appeared at her elbow suddenly, and Murmur flinched involuntarily.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He seemed genuinely concerned.

  “It’s nothing. I just wasn’t expecting you to be there. Like, at all.” How did she tell someone she’d known and played around for a couple of years that she’d been scared he’d come to stab her in the back because she thought he was under a type of spell or something conjured by the rogue who wanted her dead? Exactly, so she didn’t say anything.

  “I wanted to say—I’ve been feeling off, and I may have come across as not quite myself.” He seemed a bit sheepish, like he was trying to remember exactly what he’d done and couldn’t. “So if I offended you, I do apologize.”

  Murmur blinked at him. Had he even been in control of his own feelings at the time? Considering how he’d acted, how Jinna had acted—and the rest of them—maybe not. Maybe it really wasn’t just Jirald somehow infecting feelings that already existed. Maybe it completely fabricated them. She flashed her best locus smile at the cleric. “It’s all good. We’re fine. Was there something else?”

  Masha hesitated, his eyes glancing back at his group in the raid. “Jirald…he’s acting pretty ill, ever since we zoned into the prison. He’s speaking less, not on his DPS game, and frankly, he looks pale. Paler than his locus shell usually does, I mean.”

  Murmur realized he’d hesitated because Jirald wasn’t exactly her favorite person. “Keep an eye on him, and don’t let him overdo it. You probably know him best. We can’t really swap out, but if we need to, we do have the…NPCs with us.” She was lucky she’d caught herself. She almost said Ais, although artificial intelligence was alwa
ys responsible for different levels of NPCs.

  Masha smiled, the usual smile his cleric wore in all games ever. Easy going, nice…the same and usual Masha. So what the fuck had happened in the previous few dungeons, and what the hell did it have to do with Jirald suddenly getting sick? Because those two things together were just too much of a coincidence. Since they didn’t exist in the first place, she was going to have to figure out what had happened.

  But there wasn’t time for that. Not when a loud scream of anger tore through the circular area. The wind, like a tornado, tugged at them and pushed several of the more unprepared raiders down to the ground. The wind spiraled up and out of circle of pillars, picking up debris and dirt along with it. When it cleared, when it was gone, Murmur spied a dark spot at the top of the left pillar closest to the exiting path. Those ones were taller than the rest by maybe a few feet, but it was difficult to tell from down here.

  Robes billowed in the wind, like a supreme wizard high upon his mountain. Then the figure stepped off the columns and practically floated all the way down. Not directly down, but on a diagonal, aiming for where Elastitan had activated his portal.

  As he got closer, the wizard’s robes were noticeably more elaborate than anything their raid force was wearing. And the hood hid everything, especially at the angle the wizard stood at.

  When he finally landed, Murmur noticed that this robed figure was maybe eight or nine feet tall. Much bigger than the rest of them yet humanoid in form. She pursed her lips as the whole raid backed away from him. Groaning sounds emanated from him, guttural and painful. Like just moving caused him agony. Murmur watched him slowly curl his arms away from his sides like there were no bones in his limbs.

  She gasped as he unfurled stretched to be a few inches taller than she’d originally thought and as the strange lighting in the prison caught his face. At once stage she thought this man might have been a dark elf from the way patches of purple-tinted skin clung to its face here and there, with normal patches mixed in like skin had been torn from bodies and sewn together. The eyes, though—they were eyes she could have sworn she’d seen before. Eyes because of their malice that she wouldn’t soon forget.