by K. T. Hanna
Glancing at her raid information, she noticed they’d suffered one death. Always a caster. That was never fair; they may as well be wearing wet paper bags. The other two who’d landed last were still sitting around twenty percent health. With people still recovering, her only option was to extend her Forcefield Barrier. She pushed it as far as she could to lend some sort of defense to those around her, hoping it would be enough.
It bought some precious damage reduction that allowed the healers to catch up slightly. Devlish kept flirting with zero hit points as he still took on the two creatures he’d engaged. Murmur didn’t even have a name for them yet. The debuff didn’t make recognition possible. She couldn’t even focus on their appearance properly.
Veranol’s wards soaked up copious amounts of damage. Masha and Neriad worked their cleric magic, bringing groups up to full health with one cast as the group heals hit. Group spells seemed to be the way everyone had found to work around the debuff.
“Assist me!” Rashlyn’s voice rang loud and clear over the raid, and Murmur noticed the monk didn’t have the debuff. There was no one else to compare her to, so the enchanter made a note to check with Rashlyn later when they weren’t fighting for their lives. Maybe it had something to do with her agility and ability to fall further or something.
Like a well-oiled machine, the entire raid switched their assist to Rashlyn and began methodically working through each of the creatures. Each bard held one in thrall, which allowed for Murmur to maintain her Mez only on one target for the time being stop.
She still hadn’t managed to ascertain their appearance except for the shining white blur when they passed her line of sight. Rising up in front of them, towering at least eight feet tall, was what was called a polar-goblin. It was an appropriate name, if entirely uninspired.
At first the creatures appeared to be polar bears. Their fur was bright white and fed off the cold light emanating from the ice surrounding them. It pulsed with an icy sheen that sparkled dangerously. Their heads were about as large as she expected a to polar bears to be, but that was where the similarity ended.
Now that her eyes had grown used to the brightness, Murmur found more definition than she’d realized. Etched in place of a normal bear face was that of a goblin with bright white skin. Wrinkles crinkled in places, lending the expression an evil wise man tint. Their eyes glowed a sickly greenish brown and tinged the skin around their eyes in a sickeningly jaundiced way.
While their arms were thick and muscular like a bear, the claws extended from the fingers that looked like they could crush the life out of you. To top it off, when they roared, screamed out their battle cries, it allowed Murmur to get a good look at their teeth, which, in hindsight, she wished she hadn’t.
They appeared to possess two perfect lines of teeth. Each of them seemed to be rounded to a sharp point at the end as if looking into a spiky mountain ridge.
Speaking of ridges, they had a small one running down their entire spine to finish at the stop of the tail. These were small trapezoidal shaped parts of the body that Murmur couldn’t immediately surmise an ability to or a reason for.
As if her thoughts triggered a response, one of the bards missed their Mez refresh. Juggling songs was always difficult, but Murmur hadn’t realized just how devastating the loss of song rotation could be.
Ivinel screeched as he backpedaled, the polar-goblin turning on him with a ferocious roar. It stretched its mouth wide open, its eyes crazed with anger. Murmur shot out her single target stun only to have it miss its target due to the last ten seconds of the debuff.
The polar-goblins moved deceptively fast for their size, and just as Murmur thought Ivinel was done for, two perfectly aimed fire arrows shot into the polar-goblin’s open maw. The creature screamed in pain, batting at its mouth to dislodge the two arrows wedged in the back of its throat. As the burning continued, its life diminished greatly. At least until the arrows were broken off, and then it looked around wildly for someone to focus its anger on. And that was when Ivinel managed to catch it again with his song.
“Nice shot,” Murmur muttered in Merlin’s direction. “Maybe you can do that to the rest.”
Merlin shrugged, and Exbo spoke for them both. “Already on that, Mur. Their fur might be resistant to fire, but the back of their throats isn’t.”
Murmur resisted the urge to roll her eyes. The raid used the same tactic to bring the polar-goblins down. Hacking away, exploding away, and slashing away at the same point or joint exposed weakness which could be exploited. It was harder to be a formidable foe if you were missing your leg below the knee. And thus, the raid brought down its second polar goblin, leaving only five remaining.
“Assist to me. Rashlyn to DPS. Do not battle res, just concentrate, we’ve got this.” Devlish ordered and his eyes didn’t leave his target as the raid began to attack the next one.
Rashlyn didn’t look too upset at being changed to a DPS. In fact, she was grinning like a clown, her eyes sparkling with the fun she was having. It was good to see the monk in such high spirits.
Taking an overview of the entire raid as they single target burned down the next opponent, Murmur noticed they had only lost two people. Dalvin, who Murmur had her eye on now because he seemed to cause trouble or die no matter where he was. If her suspicions were correct, they were going to need all the mages they could get for the next part of this dungeon. Fire overpowered ice when aimed in the exact right spot, so Dalvin needed to stop dying at the drop of a hat.
The other death was from Spiral. Cardishan, their witch, had been a victim of the debuff and his own momentarily backfired cauldron. Two of their own down and two of the opponents down; she hoped there wasn’t some weird synchronicity with this fight and that the deaths had just been a fluke.
As their third opponent fell crashing to the floor without their left leg, Murmur glanced around to check the health of the entire raid. No one else died as the third target did, and she heaved a momentary sigh of relief, chalking the suspicion up to be investigated later on. She wouldn’t put it past Somnia to have a give-and-take like that.
I’m not that cruel, you know, although…I’m trying to right the world; I’m not trying to destroy my would-be champions. But you should know none of these dungeons are as in the control of their Creator as they should be. The shards have been in them way too long. Watch your back. This one has grey areas.
Before Murmur could retort, Somnia devolved into a static sensation at the back of her mind. Almost the same way aliens were said to communicate with the human race so many years ago before anyone understood the stars.
The polar-goblins best attack was a nasty scratch. They could extend their fingers, which in turn changed their claws into a shortish spear. It allowed them to attack things from further away than anticipated. Before completely learning how their mechanism worked, many of the raid was seriously injured.
While the massive gashes caused by their claws were healable, Murmur didn’t want to imagine the pain that must be raking through every single player. She could see the agony in the faces of her guild mates and wondered if replacing the headsets had really been a good idea after all.
Sinister wove her magic like a tapestry whose thread was blood. Just above the heads of all the raiders hung a miasma of blood woven into a pattern so intricate that Murmur couldn’t follow it completely. If watched closely, it showed the ebb and flow of damage converting into healing as it passed through time and space to reach the targets Sinister had chosen.
The class seemed so organic to Murmur and made so much logical sense. Deal the damage and take life. But use the life you’ve taken and convert it or transfer it to a target so it doesn’t go to waste. It was a beautiful synergy.
It took several more minutes for the raid to defeat the polar-goblins. By the time they had, the fighters realized one thing: these strange creatures had sharp, icy protection over their claws, allowi
ng them to sink easier into flesh. Once in the wound, the ice would melt and leave poison behind.
If gaming had taught her anything, Murmur knew that poisonous ice would be a theme throughout the rest of the dungeon. Along with jaws that could bite off someone’s head, that was just the icing on the cake.
And she was really getting sick of welcome parties comprised of deadly trash mobs.
Storm Entertainment
Somnia Online Division
Game Development Offices – Shayla’s Office
Early Morning Day Twenty-Eight
Shayla put her head in her hands and tried to close her eyes to avoid seeing the email she just received. The bad thing about augmented reality was it stayed with you even when your eyes were closed. Thus, the stupid damned email wasn’t going anywhere.
Military Research Program
Offices of the Investigator General
Investigator James
Shayla Thompson,
It has come to our attention that a series of headset tests and monitoring has been withheld from the overall data that was delivered to us two days ago. Per our contract, unless said information is delivered to us within the next forty-eight hours, the agreement will be null and void, all contributed funds will be due back to our offices, and all research, design, and implementation information will be immediately surrendered to our Research Program.
As all we are missing is that specific data, we request it be delivered to us ASAP. We look forward to your cooperation.
Sincerely,
James Dougray
Even blinking didn’t make the damned words fade away. Forty-eight hours. The first thing she had to do was let Laria know. At least Davenport had been copied on the email. That was one less step she had to take. She counted down in her head, knowing he’d want to speak to her soon.
Her communicator buzzed in her ear, and she sighed, knowing without a doubt who it was. Fighting against the rising panic in her stomach, she took a deep breath and answered the call. “Yes, Mr. Davenport?”
He sounded tired when he spoke. “I take it you got it then?” He didn’t really wait for her to respond; it was more of a rhetorical question anyway.
“What exactly are they talking about? Do I know about it, should I know about it, and are you going to take care of it?” The weariness leaked through the line and began to affect Shayla.
It was all she could do to muster up the strength to explain to him what had happened to the best of her ability. “Laria has been monitoring her daughter since the beginning of the game. Including when she played in the pod.” She ran over her words, certain that even if her calls were been tampered with that nothing could be read into what she was saying.
“We only adjusted the headsets for that specific group of kids, because Laria is directly connected to them. More like an ‘auntie, fix me up this thing I like’ than trying to improve them for any other purpose.” She mulled the words over in her head unsure if she’d been as accurate as she wanted to be. “But they are right, we have been monitoring them, I guess, on company time, so they are probably entitled to the data we have.”
For a few moments there was silence on the other end of the connection. And while Shayla knew that Davenport was running everything she’d said over in his head, the nerves still got the better of her.
He cleared his throat. “We can run with that. Give them what they asked for and only what they asked for. We can play by their game, but they don’t know all of the plays that we have. I really don’t want to use the ace I have, but I will if I have to. This isn’t over.”
The connection terminated, and Shayla took a deep breath. She could do that. They had altered the headsets for deeper immersion so the kids could give mental commands easier. It was as simple as that. As for the files they’d gathered while monitoring Fable’s raid activity, it seemed she had no other choice than to hand it over. The only thing that might give away Wren’s unusual connection to the virtual world was her conversations with the world herself. But those didn’t show up in normal logs, and only did in the ones Laria used her personal machines to monitor Wren with at home.
Headsets, the whole set of information they wanted centered on the headsets. She could do that.
One step at a time. They had to do this. And maybe, just maybe, Shayla could get it done without having to worry Laria about it at all.
As the last polar-goblin fell to the ground, an icy rush of air filled the cavern followed by a silence so loud it ached. No one in the raid spoke, nor did they move, as they stood there listening intently. Murmur wasn’t sure what they were listening for, but she knew that she too felt a sense of dread welling up inside her.
Welcome to the dungeon.
You have received a debuff.
Caution of the Ice Age
This regulates how much you can see, hear, and feel within this raid zone. You may not venture through this area without it as it provides much needed warmth at its low cost. If removed by magic, it will not reappear, and those who no longer possess it will be subject to the true levels of freezing Tieflos holds. But it does persist through death if not removed by other means.
Every gift must come with the balance, and every power must come with a check. This allows you not to freeze yet gives the chance of survival to the residents of Tieflos Peak.
A chorus of groans rose up from the raid. Murmur bit back a chuckle, unable to stop herself, especially since she didn’t find the spell itself amusing. A debuff it was wiser not to remove was an oddity in itself. Right now, they couldn’t get back the way they’d come, and they couldn’t just gate out, because of the way the portals worked. It would rubber band them back to this dungeon until they cleared it and the next one. At least they were stuck fighting in a dungeon with some protection, even if it had disadvantages included with it.
What made her the wariest was how her own abilities to sense and see things not within touching distance seemed to be under attack by this debuff. It limited her own spell lines, perhaps deliberately. But if she started considering conspiracy theories now, things would go downhill very fast.
If she so wanted, even right now while they were buffing up and preparing, Murmur could soothe everybody into believing they’d be perfectly okay. She could Mezmerize the entire group if they were close enough to her, thus taking away their ability and choice to do anything. She could debuff them or buff them, persuade them all to go along with everything just the way she wanted them to.
She had the power to overwhelm the minds of others, to influence them. Was that the case for every enchanter, or had her own intentions soiled the original design of the enchanter?
That was an eye-opening thought. Her friends wouldn’t approve of those ideas, but would they even know? What sort of person was she for contemplating that?
You’re being pragmatic, I believe.
You’re not helping, she shot back at Somnia.
Yes, I am. It’s not a question of morality, it’s a question of what is the best way to accomplish something?
By mind controlling friends? Murmur was proud of the sarcasm in her mind voice.
Don’t be obtuse. It’s a question of doing what is in your power to make sure those people and things you hold dear aren’t harmed more than necessary. Mental damage can be just as dangerous as physical. Sometimes even worse. Don’t downplay your willingness to protect your friends on moral grounds.
You don’t get it. The trouble was, Murmur could totally see Somnia’s side. It was the logical view. Protect people’s minds whether they asked her to or not, whether they wanted her to or not. But doing so could jeopardize everything.
Not doing so could yield the same result. You’ll never know until you have to act in the situation. Don’t let yourself get too confused. It’s just the foothold the virus will wait for.
Veranol had been talking to her,
but all Murmur could think was that she might give into imposing her will on others. What if it was the only choice? If something had to be done in a split second and there was no time to anyone else to react? While she understood why her friends were upset, she also wondered if they were really looking at the bigger picture. Was a bit of compelled safety really such a bad thing when the alternate might be far worse?
While a part of her was aghast at what she had occasionally done without thinking, the logical part of herself that still found no shame in her original train of thought. Somnia wasn’t wrong, but maybe she wasn’t entirely right either.
Veranol’s words finally broke through to her. “Mur? Are you okay? Have you heard a word I said?” His tone gravitated between concerned and irritated.
Just a glance, Murmur could see that the rest of the raid had been waiting on her. She could feel the flush rush through her cheeks, and even Tiachi cradled just above Murmur’s ear chittered irritably.
“Yes. Yes, I’m fine.” She hurried to reassure them, to let them know that she could still deal with the situation and barely resisted just blanketing them with a feeling of understanding. “I was running through some spell diagnostics so I could pull out the best ones for us to use in the upcoming tests.”
Good one, Murmur. She chastised herself inwardly, annoyed at how scattered her ability to express herself was becoming. All in all, being able to separate her thought processes and perform several at once might have an advantage when it came to academic settings, but here in the game world, she couldn’t help but notice it only took her attention away from what was really important.
And right now, that was making sure all of the raid survived and made it through to the next keys.
“Well, what do you think? About us sending out a few of the rogues so they can scout out the area and report back to us.” Veranol stood gazing down at her, and she could feel the concern in that expression. Ignoring it was one thing, but looking at it was another, so she turned her full attention back to the shaman and gave him her answer.