by K. T. Hanna
Duration: Instant, 60 second recast
Effect: This spell allows you to remove a beneficial buff from a group of enemies within a limited area of effect. The caster of the buff will receive backlash from this spell and may hyper focus on you for removing it. Be warned.
Esoteric Fix
Cast: Area of Effect
Type: Cure
Duration: Instant, 60 second recast
Effect: If more than half your group is affected by the same magical debuff or effect, then this is the best way to cure them of it. This group debuff Cure does have a limited radius, like all AoE spells. Please make sure your group members are within casting distance.
Murmur smiled, but she wasn’t sure how good all of this was. Many of her new AoE spells appeared to be limited or limiting. The recast times were a bit rough, but it did give her more room to be an AoE champ.
The runes swirled again as she absorbed the last two, and she carefully unrolled the last scroll.
Sinuous school, level forty-five.
Hypnotic Charm
Cast: Others
Type: Mind Control
Duration: Minimum duration is half the caster’s level in seconds, maximum is two times the caster’s level in seconds.
Effect: This spell is a hybrid of Charm and Hypnotic Suggestion. It is specifically designed to briefly control an enemy character. Be wary of the time limits. It is recommended you navigate away before the earliest possible break in control.
Murmur frowned before shrugging her shoulders and absorbing the last spell. She wasn’t sure about it. Her Charming Cooperation spell was fantastic, but this one was specifically designed to subvert opponents, if she was reading it correctly.
Enchanters could be cheeky little buggers.
I wouldn’t advise being too reckless.
Murmur blinked as Riasli’s voice drifted through her mind. She hadn’t heard from the manipulative feles since she disappeared from the cell in a cloud of smoke. It was almost reflexive to clamp her barriers down, but she stopped at the last second.
Why? she asked.
Maybe she could get some information from her enemy.
There are ways to lock you out of the game if you die in it. Don’t be so overconfident.
The words were fading toward the end, like her enemy was having difficulty maintaining the connection. Murmur rolled her eyes and slammed up her shields. But a small part of her wondered if maybe Riasli had a point. What if her headset made her more vulnerable in ways they hadn’t foreseen?
Just another thing to worry about. And where was Somnia when she needed the world to fend off the evil voice in her head?
Storm Entertainment
Somnia Online Division
Game Development Offices
Late Day Twenty-Two
Shayla felt constantly on edge. With James back in the offices and not pretending to be her assistant anymore, talking about shit they didn’t want him to know was even more difficult. A knock at her door sent her jumping into the air. When she looked to see Davenport outside, she breathed a sigh of relief.
“Come in,” she called out, busying herself with the last headset. Silke stood with her, monitoring the tweaks. Calibrating the headgear so it didn’t fry one of the testers brains. They’d avoided that outcome with Wren, so it probably wasn’t a good idea for them to start it with her friends.
“Hard at work, I see.”
Shayla looked up and really drank in how Davenport looked. By all appearances he was fine. His attire was on point, crisp and clean, just like it always was. And his grey hair sat perfectly in place. But there were additional lines around his eyes, and he seemed tired.
“Making the experimental adjustments to replicate the previous data without the worst of the side effects. On to the last one now.” Shayla was quite proud of herself.
Anyone not in the exact know would hear that and think they were doing something good. Which they were. But she wasn’t giving away what it was. Not to James. The pain in the ass seemed to have eyes and ears everywhere.
She wanted, more than anything, to leaf through her employees and pull out the bad seeds, but she didn’t have time right now. Maybe after they fixed the degrading coding in the world.
“How is the game going?” Teddy took a seat. He didn’t need to be offered one, he owned them all.
Shayla glanced up. He wanted the truth; she could see it in his eyes. “It’s going as well as can be expected. We’ve located several problem areas and are working on solutions to those.”
It was as close as she could get to we might be able to get a sample of the underlying virus and work on an antivirus for it. Though she was still waiting for that.
He smiled at her. “Knew I could count on you.”
Teddy sat there for a while, watching them work. Then he leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands, studying their every move.
“That’s fascinating. Your recreating Wren’s?” His eyes shone with interest and life. Like it was something he’d always wanted to see. It made Shayla wonder why all of a sudden, he had time to come and see them.
“Yeah. We’re recreating it without the hang ups. We don’t need a repeat of that. And as it turns out, her guild group are willing to test them for us, so we’ll have them at their doorsteps shortly. This is the last one.” Shayla kept her voice low and glanced back at the monitor as they received a beep of a warning. “Not that one then…”
Teddy chuckled. “Keep it up. We have a lot riding on this.”
His eyes regained a haunted look. Shayla wished she had more time to spend with him, because right now she was burning with curiosity and he looked like he might even contemplate telling her things.
“Heads up.” She needed to let him know that as far as the virus went, they might actually have to reboot the system at some stage if they were to have a hope of finding a solution to these shards that had been mentioned. “I’ll let you know if we need downtime for anything, okay?”
He grimaced. “I thought that might be the case. It’ll be what it’ll be. If we can give them notice this time, that would be splendid. What got us into trouble last week was the fact that no one knew.”
“Well, to be fair, we didn’t know either.” Shayla laughed, keeping an eye on the camera she’d affixed to the ceiling outside her door. James was standing just out of her vision. As if he were trying to listen in on their conversation. She frowned. Bugs. She needed to sweep for bugs again. Although she did have the high-pitched enabler.
Grinning, she activated it and had the distinct pleasure of watching James on her monitor jump back and rip an earpiece out of his ear. That had to have hurt. A human couldn’t hear the sound, but any listening device would pick it up and sound it out in a way that could probably burst ear drums if left in place.
“I know we didn’t. But they don’t have to know we knew absolutely nothing. They can just think it was an unexpected result of an expected result. Perhaps. I’m not even sure now.” Davenport sunk his head into his hands again. “I’ve been up for too long. I won’t be back until tomorrow morning.”
“You realize it’s passed noon and you’re not really taking time off, right?” Shayla asked as she made the final tweak to bring the headgear in line with what they had for the other ones.
“I know.” He shrugged. “But it’s what I’ve got for now.”
Shayla watched him go and turned back to her project. If she could just keep this out of James’s hands for long enough for them to fix the game, everything would work out fine.
She kept having to convince herself it wasn’t the mother of all IFs.
Murmur was going over a map in the kitchen when Emilarth walked into the castle. Not that having one of the AIs around was anything to be shocked by, but she’d walked in from the lair entrance, and that immediately set Murmur’s teeth o
n edge.
“Hey. That’s not where I expected visitors to be.” She tried to make it sound friendly, but given Belius’s nature, Murmur found it difficult to trust other AIs if they weren’t Telvar.
Emilarth froze, her gaze falling on Murmur. She didn’t say anything for a few seconds.
“You’re back.”
“That’s observant,” Murmur said under her breath, putting her hands on her hips and staring down the feles AI. Snowy growled softly in the back of his throat, and Emilarth took a deep breath.
“Sorry. I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.” She glanced around the kitchen as if searching for others and appeared relieved no one else was there.
“We defeated a rather weird dungeon by helping monsters for once, hit level forty-five, got tired, and are taking naps and going back over. We bound in Multagen.” Short and sweet. Murmur really wanted to get to why Emilarth had been down there in the treasure room. Was she after the shards now too? Had she figured out that Telvar was guarding them for Mur so she wouldn’t get tainted?
“I need to let you know something about Telvar. And I don’t think you’re going to like it,” Emilarth started, taking a few steps closer to Murmur. There was sadness in her eyes, undisguised and raw.
A flare of panic shot through Murmur. “Something about Telvar? Is he okay?”
The feles AI hesitated.
“Oh, no. What’s happened? Was it Bel?” Murmur had a billion things run through her mind, none of them good. Emilarth’s eyes flickered when she said Bel, so Murmur knew it was immediately. The rage that boiled inside her, that flickered behind her eyelids—it burned.
“He infected Tel.” They weren’t the words Murmur was expecting to hear, and it slowed her fire briefly.
“What do you mean?” She didn’t really want to know, but she had to. “Infected how?”
“I mean he infected him by forcing a rather large getashi into him.” Emilarth shuddered as she spoke, and Murmur couldn’t suppress her own reaction either. That was vile.
“He’s not okay?” Murmur felt a stir of anxiety.
Telvar had always been there. He’d stopped her from going nuclear; he’d watched out for her multiple times. She even got the feeling that he’d sent Snowy to her. Telvar had to be okay. He had to be.
“He’s fighting it. If that helps. I have to try and get a sample of the virus to your mother so she can make an antivirus. Or at least, we hope they can write one.” Emilarth sounded dubious at best, like their only shot was a crapshoot.
“Mom can do it. If she works with Shayla, anyway.” But even Murmur didn’t believe her own words. Her mom could do a lot of things, but working miracles wasn’t really one of them. “Wait. What do you need in order to take it to them?”
Emilarth thought for a moment. “A piece…a shard. But it needs to be protected from me. Neither I nor any AI will be able to touch it, or it’ll melt into us and we’re goners.”
“But you can’t just give an in-game item to my mother. Won’t you have to break it down?” Murmur knew that Emilarth was trying to help, but they couldn’t transfer an in-game item out into the real world. It just didn’t work like that.
The AI hesitated, like she several computations running at once and hadn’t quite figured out the how yet.
“Different worlds make shit so much more difficult, don’t they?” Murmur tried to smile to ease the situation, but there wasn’t anything else she could think of. She was getting ready to meet Masha before grabbing a nap in a real bed and going back to the grind. She only had six hours to do that in.
“Can you take it to wherever you go as AIs?” Like, didn’t they have a place of their own?
Emilarth nodded slowly. “That’s where I intended to give it to her. Normal items won’t come into the space with us. But this isn’t a normal item. And it should, technically, transpose itself into actual coding like everything does there. I’m almost scared to take the virus in, in case it does more harm than good. But if I don’t, there’s no way for me to give it to her. If it’ll even come in with me.”
She seemed so deep in thought that Murmur didn’t want to pull her out of it, but she had to get to Ululate shortly, and the trip was going to take her about fifteen minutes even with her mount since she had to go around the long way. She didn’t feel like swimming.
“I have two pieces on me, wrapped in thick cloth. Would that be enough, or do you need some sort of box to keep them in that will be a better barrier between both you and it?” Time. Why didn’t she have more time?
Emilarth’s expression grew pinched with worry. She looked up at Murmur, her wide feline eyes wary. “Be careful. It can affect everyone. I’m not entirely certain, but your in-game avatar is coded, and thus any type of virus has the ability to corrupt it too.”
Murmur gulped. She’d not thought of that. But she tried to brush it off as unnecessary concern. “I’ve had these two for ages, and I’m fine. Will these help you? Or else I’ll go pop them in storage.”
Emilarth watched as Murmur drew them out from her inventory and placed them on the kitchen slab. They were completely covered with no sliver visible. The cloth around one of them was tied tightly with the strips she’d torn off her original robe, while the other was wrapped deftly in a ragged piece of shirt she’d got off a monster at some stage.
The AI approached them nervously. Murmur couldn’t blame her. She was scared to see what Telvar was like being infected. She’d need to seal the cavern off from others so they didn’t venture down there accidentally and get dragged into it with him.
“Is he okay down there?” Murmur asked, changing the subject briefly.
Emilarth nodded slowly. “I think it helps him being down there. It’s part of the dragon’s initial coding. With any luck, it might bring him back to himself.”
With any luck didn’t sound reassuring to Murmur. She fingered the getashi she’d got off Clezdill and realized it wasn’t in a protective covering. She’d have to rectify that. “Best to keep the others away from him?”
Again, the AI hesitated. “I think so. Hiro will go in. He’s been trying to help. Being Telvar’s creation, he’s more attached than most will be.”
“Maybe that’ll help.” But Murmur didn’t even believe the words she uttered as she deftly bound the getashi in her hand with some cloth. She’d have to wait to take it down to the hoard. Until Tel was better.
Emilarth picked one of the shards up from the kitchen counter and held it in her hand for a minute before heaving a sigh of relief. “Well, I think I’m okay. So far, anyway. I’ll put it in a pouch and then take them with me so I’m double protected.”
She did as she’d said, plopping one into a solid canvas bag.
“There.” Emilarth patted it as she slipped it over her head, crossbody style to avoid it falling off easily. “Thank you. I think this’ll work. I also know you want to see him. I could warn you away and hope you’d listen, but I don’t think you will, so I’ll say this instead. Be careful. Don’t let him get close. He’s not himself, but he is still fighting the effects.”
Murmur nodded, not quite trusting herself with words yet. Emilarth returned the gesture and left the kitchen. Mur watched her go, certain the AI was trembling as she walked. How would it feel to be an almost omnipotent being, and then realize you were susceptible to something as vile as this virus?
She glanced up at the doorway, the path leading inside to where she’d first met Telvar. Where he’d revealed that he wasn’t just another boss. She couldn’t imagine the last three weeks without him. He’d been there for her in a way others couldn’t be, because he could see what she was going through at any given time. He could feel her through the system. She missed him already. Right now, she needed that wise council, and she would have loved to hear from him.
Glancing at the time in the corner of her screen, she groaned. Right now, Telvar wasn’
t the AI she’d come to cherish. Instead, he was some dark and twisted version going through torment she couldn’t comprehend. She needed to understand it though, and to do that she had to get through the other dungeons. To do that, they were going to need help.
But first, before she went to meet Masha, she needed to look in on her friend. Slowly, she walked toward the entrance to his cavern, taking each step as small as possible and trying to minimize her presence and noise. Stepping out onto the ledge, she walked to the two prison cells that were perched on the edge and looked down.
There, on the pile of his treasure, Telvar was perched. His huge wings wrapped around him, including his head, and as far as she could tell, he was sleeping. Somehow, he managed to look sadder than she’d ever seen even, though his expression wasn’t visible. Waking him would be counterproductive, but all she wanted right then was a Telvar hug. The thing was, he wasn’t himself.
Pulling herself away, she deliberately turned her back on the sight before heading back into the kitchen. She had to admit she was more shaken than she thought she’d be to see him just like that.
Something was very wrong in the game. Telvar was infected, Belius was doing the gods knew what, and parts of the world had become voids where Somnia pocketed stuff. If they got out of this with their brains intact, she’d be completely surprised.
Somnia Online
Tarisha Continent – Mayor’s Balcony, Ululate
Day Twenty-Two
Murmur was tired when she finally made it to her meeting with Masha. In a way, she wished Telvar had never pushed her out of the game. At least then she’d still be immune to this fatigue that long hours in the game world gave her.
Maybe it was the way her headset intertwined with the world, but she’d never felt so spent in a game before.
She scanned the balcony, searching for the Exodus cleric. She found him sitting at a bench with a mug of ale in his hand as he stared out at Vahrir. The fortress was being unusually quiet this morning, and she watched him for a few seconds longer.