by K. T. Hanna
Table of Contents
Title Page
Map of Tarishna
Map of Cenedril
Books by KT Hanna
Preiously in Somnia...
Chapter One: Hindsight
Chapter Two: Device Reboot
Chapter Three: Evolution
Chapter Four: Fixation
Chapter Five: Uneasy Alliance
Chapter Six: Trash
Chapter Seven: Cave In
Chapter Eight: Entry
Chapter Nine: Formation
Chapter Ten: Vahrir
Chapter Eleven: Anguaisch
Chapter Twelve: Infected
Chapter Thirteen: Hivemind
Chapter Fourteen: Rinse and Repeat
Chapter Fifteen: Battle On
Chapter Sixteen: Usurper
Chapter Seventeen: Multiply
Chapter Eighteen: Different
Chapter Nineteen: Stuck
Chapter Twenty: Portals
Chapter Twenty-One: Icy Peaks
Chapter Twenty-Two: Trick or Treat
Chapter Twenty-Three: Welcome to the Dungeon
Chapter Twenty-Four: Poison
Chapter Twenty-Five: Debuffs
Chapter Twenty-Six: Explosion
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Next Level
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Retrospect
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Finally
Chapter Thirty: Glower
Appendix
Glossary
Character Names
Murmur
Acknowledgments
Landmarks
Cover
SOMNIA ONLINE: FUSION
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: 978-1-948983-21-1 (Trade Paperback Edition)
ISBN-13: 978-1-948983-20-4 (Hardback Edition)
ISBN-13: 978-1-948983-19-8 (E-Book Edition)
Somnia Online:
Initializing
Anomaly
Fragments
Dissonance
Distortion
Fusion
The Domino Project:
Chameleon
Hybrid
Parasite
Kira, Kuma, Jetta, and Amanda,
and anyone who knows just how special a corgi can be.
With Rav struggling to retain his sanity after being attacked by Sui, the flux of glitches in Somnia begin to multiply. The more Somnia evolves, the more dangerous the getashi become to all the AIs.
The voices in Murmur’s mind push her toward saving Telvar. Had she been thinking clearly, she’d never have absorbed all of those shards in order to spare him. So much power, channeled through her via her headset, is overwhelming.
Laria and Shayla work tirelessly to keep the key reports out of James’ hands. If Wren’s connection to the game comes under too much scrutiny, Storm Entertainment could lose everything. The newly adjusted headsets provide a deeper connection to Somnia. Without fully understanding the link, Laria has to work overtime to quell the virus infecting the entire Somnian system.
Thwarting each attempt to access files not immediately applicable to the investment deal, Davenport continues to block James. But time is running out…
Telvar’s roar echoed through the cavern, devolving into a primal scream as his dragon form gave way once again to that of a lacerta. He fell from his perch, tumbling down and into his hoard with a crash that cut off the scream as he rolled to the ground.
Sinister blinked back the sudden heat in her eyes, the tears yearning to pour from them. She watched as Murmur rose in the air, her head thrown back, her eyes closed as her body began to emanate like a floodlight of stars, eclipsing the entire cavern.
The bloodmage threw an arm over her eyes, but not before her vision was filled with stars of its own. She flung out her healing sensors to check for Telvar’s life signs, but he was in no immediate danger. Veranol could take care of him, because Sin had other things to do.
She was far more worried about Mur. Her friend’s life fluctuated randomly, from almost flatlining back up to full and all the stages in between. While Sin knew that Mur couldn’t actually die anymore from an in-game death, it didn’t mean that she wasn’t worried. Her friend received so many strange repercussions from her headset and dying in-game, so many lingering effects.
Floating in the air just above Sinister’s head shouldn’t have been one of them.
Emilarth appeared beside them, a frown on her feles features. “Telvar is fine. What the fuck is up with Murmur?”
Sinister would have laughed at the unintentional pun, but she didn’t want to rip her focus from Mur. Instead, Sin ground out her commentary through clenched teeth. “You’re the AI, aren’t you supposed to fucking know?”
Her words were clipped, and the edge of fury nudged at her boundaries, swirling through her thoughts. Nothing else mattered except that Mur’s eyes were giving the whole cavern a light show while she floated. Gusts of wind made her robes flutter and twist when there shouldn’t have been a breeze to begin with.
The shards Murmur had released when she dove into the hoard of treasure, those parts of Michael’s brain, were suspended throughout the room in eerie stillness. All of them fed back to the enchanter with thin tendrils, like an infusion was feeding her.
They lit up with a cold black light from within, pushing against Murmur’s starry eyes as if they were trying to drown them. Why had Mur dived in to get the getashi when she knew how dangerous they could be? Perhaps she’d wanted to protect Telvar who still lay in a gasping heap at the foot of his treasure, probably trying to remember that he was, in fact, an AI and not an actual person.
That’s a little harsh.
Sinister shook her head as the crackling words broke into her thoughts. She smacked her ear, trying to figure out why the hell she could hear a voice, and one with bad reception at that. Maybe she was spending too much time in-game.
That won’t help.
This time the words were clearer, if a little soft still. Sin had no idea who was talking in her head. Unless…
“Mur?” She muttered the name softly, not wanting anyone to think she was talking to herself.
Not Mur. Close though. At least, technically.
Sin caught herself before she uttered anything else. Talking out loud even while the flurry of movement continued around her would start seeming odd. Her eyes never left the floating enchanter, and she tried her best to think at the voice in her head. What do you mean?
Clever. I’m everywhere. Your headset isn’t as powerful as hers. It’s not as…crisp.
Suddenly everything felt right as all of the pieces clicked into place for Sinister. Their new headsets made it possible for the AIs, the system, and, if she’d understood it correctly, the world to communicate properly with her. Both her and Havoc, actually. Was he having the same inner conversation?
No, he’s a bit more stubborn.
Not likely.
There was a pause. No, really, he is. At least when it comes to voices in his head.
Sinister did her best not to laugh out loud. The last thing she wanted
was to have to explain herself. Especially since she needed to get Murmur down to the ground again and figure out what had happened.
She will be fine.
Unless she falls and breaks her neck when she snaps out of that trance. Sinister was proud of the heat she put into those words as they echoed through her mind.
Again, another pause. You realize she can respawn, right?
You realize she gets mega residual effects after the death, right? Sinister’s patience was legendary, in that she barely had any.
There was a pause so long that Sin thought the voice wasn’t going to talk to her again. Dismissing the conversation, she began to focus on some of the minimal enchanter spells she had in her hybrid library. Soothe was the only spell that might have a chance. She could try and calm Murmur’s mind with that. Her only other mind related spells had to do with mana regeneration, so there was no help there.
The others around her were shouting at each other. Telvar had moved off to the left of her peripheral vision, although staggering might have been more accurate. Emilarth ran to his side, and Sinister could feel the power emanating from the AI, like she was using all her abilities to hold her brother together.
Sinister used that soothe spell on Mur like it was a lifeline. She only had eyes and ears for Murmur, and her jerkily convulsing frame as it hung in the air like a rag doll.
Static played in her head like her antenna wasn’t getting reception anymore. Murmur’s thoughts fractured, never quite meeting in the middle. She knew she’d done something stupid, something that in hindsight she should never have attempted, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think what it was.
Nor could she fathom why she’d done it.
For the life—was she still alive? Had something happened to her? The limbo around her seemed sluggish, like a pool of tar trying to steal her into its embrace. Yet there was something soothing about it as well.
Her limbs weighed heavily, listless and lifeless. A dull sensation tugged at the base of her skull and prevented her from giving into the darkness and falling asleep. Surely, she could take a nap?
Fusion.
The word fluttered through her mind, like a butterfly just out of the chrysalis. Maybe she’d been caught and was evolving, she couldn’t quite tell. Focusing on it right then seemed impossible, like so many things and words just beyond her reach.
A sound cracked through her head, broken pieces of sentences, of speech she couldn’t quite strain herself to hear. There was too much interference. Only fragments remained.
…fuse...not...heal.
The voice that leaked through to her in broken segments seemed familiar, as if she should know it. But recognition escaped her, lingering in her senses like that annoying word that balanced on the tip of her tongue when she couldn’t quite remember.
Exhaustion crept over her body, seeping into her pores, right down to her bones. It would be so easy to just go to sleep, to just let whatever it was nagging in the back of her mind happen.
Sleep.
Except she knew she couldn’t. Whatever else wasn’t getting through to her, she knew that for a fact. There was something she had to do, something she had been doing with her friends, both old and new. Friends—some of those slivers of thought floated precariously close to comprehension in her mind.
She closed her eyes, or perhaps they’d already been closed to start with. Sensations came in splintered sections. Some of them were filled with pain, while others carried a sadness so heavy it made her want to fall to the ground. Other bits hinted at happiness, at determination, and at power…but sticking them together was like trying to finish a puzzle that had lost half of its pieces.
Murmur tried to block out the static. Interference was splicing her thoughts, even the few coherent ones she had left. She knew without doubt that she couldn’t let it do that. There was something important just out of reach.
A soft glow reached her through the gloom, emanating from her hands. Soft and blue, no red…perhaps a bit of purple. It leaked through to her, giving light to the limbo of stickiness that encased her.
Shards.
Murmur’s eyes snapped open. Of course, how could she have forgotten? The shards had been strewn, stored…packed inside of Telvar’s hoard. Had he touched them?
She shook her head, the thoughts already dissipating. Telvar was her friend. She knew that much at least. Telvar’s red and gold wings flashed through her mind, his mischievous fiery eyes that held all the computational power of an AI and curiosity of a sentient being.
Murmur had wanted to save Telvar. She clung to that fact, pushing at the static, willing it to leave her alone, but the molasses around her was difficult to fight through.
Let me help you.
That voice sounded so familiar, felt so much friendlier than her current surroundings. She wanted to get back to it, to swim through the sludge and come out onto dry land wherever that might be. Was it real?
Somnia is real.
Was it? Murmur didn’t think that sounded right, only close to the truth. Somnia made alarm bells fire off in her mind. The sound of the word, the feel of the place, the blurred images that kept shooting into her mind.
It's not real. Nothing is real except you and the information you now contain.
That was a voice she didn’t know and didn’t like. The sibilant way the words were spoken reminded Murmur of poisonous intent. She recoiled, pulling in on herself, ignoring the way the substance around her followed her movements, trying to impede her every reaction.
The hostility in that voice started a dull throb inside her head, as if the center of her brain was achingly on fire. It felt like portions of her mind were being overwhelmed by something, and yet she managed to stay in a small bubble of safety, as long as she didn’t make a noise, as long as she didn’t struggle too much.
But Wren wasn’t patient, and thus neither was her avatar. Waiting didn’t suit them. It was like a key clicking into a lock Murmur hadn’t known was there, opening her mind and shedding the rubber that had been blocking her reception.
A rush of events came back to her. The headset and her coma, her mother and James, the stasis pod and her guild, Somnia and Telvar. All of it was real, and all of it was desperately trying to reach her through the toxicity that flowed around her. Through the whispers of the getashi she’d saved Telvar from.
The sludge and muck flowed off her, as if it had dawn sprinkled on it and knew it needed to get out of there. No more pretense, no more confusion, and no more fragments to keep her from connecting all of the circuits together.
Let me help you.
Murmur knew that voice, and knew that everything it did had a purpose. So far, it hadn’t harmed her or the people she cared about. So she opened herself up.
Everything that had happened since she first scanned to allocate her class, everything that she’d learned since she first put on that headset. It all came rushing back to her like a whirlpool, threatening to drown her in the flood.
But she didn’t drown; she didn’t even go under. And as the information flooded her mind, as the realizations hit her, and the circuits began to connect, Murmur knew without hesitation that everything was about to change.
Would you like to permanently fuse files?
Yes or No.
Warning: This action cannot be undone.
She didn’t even need to consider the repercussions. Without skipping a beat, Murmur directed her thoughts to Yes, and braced herself for the onslaught.
Storm Entertainment
Somnia Online Division
Game Development Offices
Day Twenty-Four
Laria stared at the screen, her eyes blinking rapidly at the information scrolling past her sight. Her fingers flew across the virtual keys as she lowered herself into a trance-like state while trying to track the foreign coding that had smashed i
nto her daughter. Barely able to keep her panic at bay, she tried to fend off the self-recrimination.
It was all her fault. If only she’d been faster with the damn coding fix. If only she’d been better about finding the loophole, about preventing the virus from spreading…If only she’d not asked Michael to make her a special damned headset.
But she could play the if-only game all day.
Shayla sat next to her, likely doing the same, but Laria didn’t have time to check. Her whole body was on high alert. Despite all the shit Wren had got into since they launched this damned game, since she’d put on that rigged headset and plummeted herself into a coma-like-state, this current problem was the worst one they’d encountered yet.
The virus was malignant, like a cancer for the program. It didn’t attach itself to the organs of the game, but instead to the individual elements—those that affected players and coded NPCs. It worked insidiously, weaving its way into the fabric of the world and subtly changing how everything worked. From the characters and organic interactions to the ways the dungeons formed based on the actions of the players. The first true sign was in Curet.
It was part of the reason Riasli had emerged, part of the reason the AIs were developing as their own personalities, and it was definitely the reason Somnia had woken as her own persona.
Laria took a breath, so big it caught in her throat. The slight pain sensation brought her focus back, and she cracked her knuckles before diving back into the code.
It wasn’t like those old movies where the green code appeared on a black screen and whirled around your head. It was more like submerging oneself inside of a vat filled with jelly that seeped into every pore as the coding began to suffuse you.
If she wasn’t careful, it would be easy to get lost. Complex code was the worst, possessing a hypnotic element to its structure. There were reasons all the VR gear came with warnings. Not even one of them was exaggerated, if the subject happened to succumb to the lure. Luckily, having someone do so was a rare occurrence.