by K. T. Hanna
But at the same time, she knew she had to keep an eye on Risk. One wrongful death, one attacked ally, and all bets were off.
“I think we’re here, Mur,” Devlish muttered. His words carried anyway, echoing through the empty corridor.
As if to punctuate his statement, sconces clicked on all around them. In front of them, the floor dipped, and in the middle of it was a large, round hole. Remembering back to where they’d all tumbled through that hole in one of the last dungeons, Murmur suppressed a shudder. If she strained her ears, she could hear something. A slithering, shaking sound. Like a serpent had a hold of maracas.
Snowy growled deep in his throat, echoed by Shir-Khan in a canon-like fashion. The low rumble reverberated through to her from the wolf’s close proximity.
“Stay alert,” Devlish called out, and Murmur saw his stances shift as shadows began to congregate around his feet. The darkness leaked out of him like a second skin, reinforcing his worn armor.
Fable’s entire raid entourage enabled their combat modes in such a swift time that Murmur felt pride bubble beneath the nervousness. It took the others far longer to equip.
“Is this a boss?” Masha asked softly.
Murmur shrugged. “We never know until we fight. I’ve got a feeling it’s not yet. Just a precursor. From what I can gather anyway.” She closed her eyes, concentrating for a moment before opening them again and grinning.
“Yeah. The big one is a ways off, biding its time. Waiting for us to show what we’re made of. This should be fun.” She felt light as a feather as she sent out her nets, filling them with confusion and targeting the slithering little buggers that fell into her trap. Snakes, and yet not snakes. More like land eels. With fins and sharp fangs, venomous from what she could tell.
“Be careful touching them. Try not to come into contact with skin, only weapons. I think they’re venomous.” Murmur grimaced. “Don’t use anything you’d use on a boss. These are testing the waters to see if we’re easy prey. Don’t want us to burn cool downs we might otherwise need.”
Sinister nudged Murmur with her hip. “You know. That’s scary stuff right there.”
Murmur laughed. “Not really. I can sense them, the general gist of what they’re feeling and how far they want to go. We won’t get the big one out if we show them how strong we are. We need to downplay it or they’ll protect it by keeping it safe and dying in its place.”
“Downplay?” Sinister wiggled her eyebrows. “I can do that.”
Murmur fought the urge to blush and pushed her concentration to focus solely on the impending battle.
Merlin coughed, as if alerting them to his presence, and held his bow above his head. “Ranged with me on the outside of the dip!”
He led the group of ranged classes to line up all around the outside of the huge crater in the floor. It had a lip of about three feet all the way around. He directed them to space out so that there was no one easy spot for a group of the small snakes to congregate on.
Healers backed out too, and Murmur stayed behind, but close to the tanks. If she wasn’t needed for stuns, she’d go back to one of the safe spots, but from the abundance of tiny brains she could feel approaching them, it was inevitable that she’d be needed in the middle. The stunning was starting to take its toll on her. So monotonous, so trivial, and yet so vital. She wanted to be more than that, push it further than that. There had to be a way.
So even as she watched the creatures approaching them as they swarmed out of the hole in the center of the floor, caught in Devlish’s shadow web, Murmur reached out, an idea slowly taking shape and subverted portions of her net into traps.
Some she filled with redirection elements, so that confusion could overwhelm those who landed there. She accessed the few visions she’d built for her Sinuous line and set them up as hallucinations, as terrifying memories that could insert themselves where needed. Some of them held elements of death by loved ones, by people or things who were trusted. So these snake-like creatures would see their brethren attacking them and thus seek to defend themselves in an endless cycle that should see them destroying each other.
Other visions would show enemies on all sides of them, leading to the same result in vicious efficiency.
She tugged at the consciousnesses she could feel approaching the traps she’d set and pulled them into the vortex of confusion and hallucinations. Pooling all of her Sinuous abilities together, she trapped those who entered the nets in a torturous loop that had them fighting each other without realizing it.
They gouged at each other, blind to who they were actually fighting as fear drove them to new heights of violence. Terrified screeching proceeded spouts of venom, bites, and strangulation directed at each other and not the raid. They tore strips off each other with their teeth, or melted through to bone with venom whose acidic qualities were amplified by dread.
Sweat beaded on Murmur’s brow, and she could feel the cooling effect as it ran down her face. Tiachi chittered loudly, a hint of fear in the tiny creature’s tone. But Murmur watched their attackers. She watched as the snakes writhed around each other, bereft of any semblance of control. Panicked and frightened, striking out at each other.
It didn’t affect all of them, only the ones who got caught in the sections of her net that she’d entrapped. The fewer creatures there were, the less of a chance her friends would be attacked, the less of a chance that they would fail.
They couldn’t fail.
You won’t fail.
I know. I don’t need you to tell me that.
Somnia was silent for a moment. Perhaps. But you do need me to ground you. You aren’t using your druidic powers to their fullest extent. Don’t let the darkness feed through to you. Be the one that feeds it.
Murmur blinked and took a step back. Snowy nipped at her fingers, and she looked around at the fighting through new eyes. Her traps helped her raid. They were defeating their swarming attackers relatively easily. But she could feel the pain from those beings she’d trapped.
It buffeted against her mind, calling out to her sense of compassion with such force that she almost stumbled.
What had she done?
She willed the darkness she’d created to swallow those creatures whole, to minimize their suffering. It left her weak inside, but she couldn’t show it. Perhaps scared was the more accurate term. She had no idea why she’d approached the problem that way when there could have been so many other options.
An intensity burned between her shoulder blades; it was hot and uncomfortable, like she’d just had a target painted on her back in lava. She whirled around to see Jirald staring at her. Beneath his hood she swore she could make out a malevolent smile of approval. It sent shivers running through her body, and she had to clamp down on the sensation before she started to shake. If nothing else, she didn’t want his approval.
Later. She’d have to deal with this later. There wasn’t time right now.
There is always time, Murmur.
But she ignored the voice in her head, ignored the world around her in favor of just defeating the here and now. It was all she could do to refrain from walking that precipice.
Finally, the fight stopped. Her raid was covered in black and red blood, and some of the players were badly poisoned and required that Mellow come up with some tonics from their cauldron, because there were so many stacks of poison on them; cures from healers weren’t enough to suffice.
Your actions have created a subversion of the Sinuous line of spells. You have now created: Insidious Lure
Insidious Lure
Cast: Instant once released
Type: Entrapment/Psychosis
Duration: For as long as your will remains focused.
Effect: This will lure your enemies into a trap of the mind, forcing them to see their worst fears and act on them, even to the detriment of their peers. It will continue
until the caster releases the spell, or the enemies have killed each other.
Caution: This spell can be mentally taxing and even damaging. Make sure your reasons for using such force are justified. Try not to get caught in your own nightmare along the way.
She’d created that. No matter how many times Murmur read over it, it still didn’t seem like a good spell.
“Mur?” Sinister placed a hand on her shoulder, pulling Murmur out of her thoughts.
She looked at her friend gratefully. “Thanks, Sin. I was a bit preoccupied.”
“So what was that?” Sinister bit her lip as she gestured at the black markings on the floor. It looked like scorch marks, but Murmur knew better.
“Just trying something different.” Her voice sounded hollow and her words like a lie, even to her own ears.
Sinister frowned, and gestured toward the hole in the middle of the dip. “I’m not letting this go, but right now we think that big thing is coming up through there and we need a cohesive front.”
Sinister was right, and Murmur pulled her focus away from the new spell she’d created. Suppressing a shudder, she nodded, turning her attention to the impending battle. As long as she didn’t use that spell again, everything would be okay.
Somnia Online
Continent of Tarishna - Vahrir Fortress, Dungeon Version 22.248, Triggered by Murmur of Fable.
Late Day Twenty-Five
Masha watched Murmur as surreptitiously as possible. He could see why her guild gave her so much respect, but also that they balanced her out. She seemed capable of intense focus on specific things, which wasn’t always a good trait.
But one thing worried him about her. Maybe no one else had noticed, but that spell she used to wipe out a chunk of the small waves of precursor snakes had been no joke. In fact, it had been scary. So much, he was fairly sure it scared her too, if her post fight reaction was anything to go by.
If he wasn’t mistaken, she was shaking. Ever so slightly, but the movement was there. Her skin seemed even more pale, and her eyes widened, like she’d just woken up from some sort of trance. Sinister stood by her side, touching the enchanter’s arm delicately. The action visibly allowed Murmur to relax, taking away some of the fear that colored the enchanter’s edges.
If her reactions were to be believed, then Murmur hadn’t ever cast that spell before, hadn’t even realized she could. Which made Masha wonder how it was even cast in the first place. How did that class work? Her abilities seemed to range from sensing presences to understanding how opponents were going to attack. Surely that was overpowered. Except it only made him wish their enchanters would hurry up and level faster.
Ishwa poked Masha in the side. “You’re spacing out, dude. They’re giving us instructions on this fight. Totally guessing. If it were just down to guessing, I could lead a raid blindfolded.”
“Stop feeling inferior. If you wanted to feel all-powerful, you shouldn’t have picked a gnome,” Masha joked, but Ishwa didn’t seem that impressed by the humor.
“That’s not very nice. Gnomes are cute.” Ishwa gestured toward the main group. “Time to concentrate.”
Masha nodded, his gaze still held by the mass of corpses littering the ground splayed out from strange scorched black circles on the ground. He needed to ask Murmur what she’d done, because it seemed like everyone else was oblivious, or at least were acting like it. Except for Jirald, who was smiling.
And that made Masha even more nervous.
Somnia Online
Mikrum Isle - Almost-Completed Fable Guild Headquarters
Day Twenty-Five
Emilarth paced the large hall, glancing at Telvar as she did so. “So you’re telling me that we don’t know where Belius has gone?”
Telvar sighed from his perch on the meeting table and tried again. “We don’t know which body he’s currently inhabiting.”
“Which is another way to say: we don’t know where he is,” Emilarth retorted hotly.
“Well, when you put—” but Telvar cut off as a strange and shocking sensation ran through his mind. Like horrible pain. He checked his wards, the protections he’d placed on the island and all of the coding he’d done to keep this place safe.
“Shit.” He could feel anger boiling inside him. One of the negative human emotions, yet still an emotion, still reminding him that he had become something more than what he’d originally been. If Belius had done nothing else, he’d lit the fire of anger. Telvar had evolved. And he’d be damned if he was going to let anything take that away from him.
“Riasli is trying to breach the island’s defenses.” He ground the words out, alerting Hiro from his post near the entrance, and eliciting a gasp from Emilarth.
“What the hell? She’s coming to the island? Again?” Emilarth sounded like the protective sister she sometimes pretended to be. It made Telvar reassess her progress as well. He wished he could do the same for his brother, after he reduced his coding into a pile of rubble.
“It’s okay. I have protections up, coding in place to prevent her specific signature from gaining access. As well as anything that has an imprint from her. Not about to let what we’ve worked so hard for come apart.” The last he said almost to himself. “Granted, her wavelengths seem subtly adjusted, but if I can still identify her, so can the coding.”
“You know I’ll help, right?” Emilarth smiled grimly. “She was never meant to be like this.”
In the blink of an eye, Telvar and Emilarth stood on the outskirts of Mikrum Isle. Right down where the drawbridge would span the narrowest path between the island and the water. The bridge was raised, and Riasli stood on the other dock, a look of pure outrage on her face. The emotion contorted what had once been gentle calico features. Her face was now lean and sinewy, with a pulsing vein at her temple that wouldn’t quit.
Grotesque hounds paced nervously around her. In the setting sunlight their leathery black skin and drooling mouths lent an eerie sensation to the scene.
“Let me on the island, Telvar, or you’ll regret it.” She spat the words out, her eyes lighting up in a distinct blood red.
“I think not,” Telvar responded coolly, although he was having a hell of a time keeping his rage under wraps. The shard experience seemed to have made him far more volatile. “You should leave before I make you.”
He knew he was far more powerful than she was, however he had to think about in-game losses, and how the world needed to progress. So he watched her and her hounds, assessing each movement and making contingency plans in case she didn’t back down.
“You’re never going to be able to make me do anything. You know that, and I know that.” Suddenly, a sly smile spread over her expression, like she’d just figured out how to catch him. “You realize I know how to activate the fountains, don’t you?”
The threat hung in the air, and all Telvar had was a vague recollection of what she was talking about. But it was enough. Activating the fountains would reset all the original coding and give any foreign coding like the getashi free rein to rewrite the world. It would cause chaos throughout Somnia. Which was a bad thing in itself, but even worse because Somnia’s evolution would stop there as well.
No matter how hard he focused on her words, he couldn’t quite remember the details. Had the virus wiped some of his files? He couldn’t let her know how unsettled he was; that would only allow her to win, and he couldn’t let that happen. “We all know how. We just wouldn’t do it. That threat holds little weight because there are people who can stop you.”
Riasli’s face contorted into a scowl. “Just you wait, Telvar. You’re going to pay for this. You and your sister. My master isn’t forgiving, and he’ll give me all the power I need to destroy you.”
In the blink of an eye, she was gone.
“What did she mean, Tel? She can’t activate them, can she?” Emilarth looked thoughtful, and didn’t mak
e eye contact.
“To be honest—” He paused, eyes downcast as he shook his head. “I don’t think she can. She shouldn’t be able to. It’s a higher function of our AI emergency protocols. But so much has changed in Somnia, I’m not even sure who can access it anymore.”
The massive snake teetered out of its hole, heads above the raid. Anguaisch’s hood flared out to the sides, and venom dripped down from its fangs making anything beneath it disintegrate in an acidic mess.
Murmur couldn’t stun it, and she couldn’t Mez it, which left relatively little in her arsenal. And she had no intention of using Insidious Lure anytime ever again. Instead, she slowed it, and took away its resistances, happy to let the rest of the raid take over for this one. Her ability to stay out of shit was almost legendary. Even in her half paying attention state she managed to avoid all of the ground damage and most of the AoE stuff.
That is until Anguaisch reared up even higher and swept its tail around in a circle. She didn’t move fast enough, and caught the end of it as it finished its 360-degree sweep. The force of the blow sent her careening into one of the walls, up where the rest of the ranged fighters stood.
Why she hadn’t come up here as soon as she realized that none of her close-range spells would help, or were needed…she wasn’t sure. She needed to get her head back in the game and concentrate on what was important instead of fearing what she’d done earlier.
“Murmur. Focus,” Havoc barked at her, but softly enough that no one around them would have heard. “Your head hasn’t been in the game since we fought the snake trash. What gives?”
Murmur shook her head. That was just the thing. She had no clue what it was that was making her act like this. Maybe some doubt had crept in after their earlier conversation about her friends not wanting her to soften blows, or make them feel safe. About how she led the guild, about what it was she was doing and whether or not it was right. About how she’d fried those eel-snakes…