by K. T. Hanna
“Then I guess you’re here for the duration of the game or until the world falls down.” He smiled again, but this time it was evil and allowed some of his spiky little teeth to poke through the expression, lending it an even more sinister air.
Emilarth analyzed his words. Until the world fell down. What did he mean by that? What had he set in motion? She’d always been able to taunt and trick the two of them, but getting real information out of them was proving to be difficult. While Tel would have told her when he went to the toilet if she’d wanted to know, Bel wasn’t inclined to let anyone in on anything. Secretive little shit that he was.
She wracked her brains for a way to tap into his inner workings, for something that he cared about. And then she got it.
“You know Murmur would kick your ass for this, don’t you?” She didn’t put any particular emphasis on any of the words. Just let the sentence sit there, waiting for him to digest it and react in his own time.
He paused, and conflict dashed across his face, like he didn’t like the implication of her words, nor the fact that if Murmur found out, she would indeed probably kick his ass. The myriad emotions that flickered over his features were fascinating. Emilarth watched it like a Sunday night special.
Finally, his processing of the statement stopped, and he directed a glare at Emilarth. “You’re lucky I can’t undo the safeties of the system without both of you on my side or you’d be regretting that statement right about now.”
“I would? Why?” She opened her large cat eyes innocently, as if that hadn’t even crossed her mind.
“Stop the games, Emilarth. I’m not playing.” He bit the words out like he was pretending it was her head and turned around.
But she wasn’t about to give up. “Not in the mood for tormenting your sister and leaving her hanging most uncomfortably? Not in the mood for the truth? I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about.”
The planets in his eyes flashed a bizarre red while as he turned back to face her, and his hair took on a life of its own. It was only a few seconds, but it was enough for Emilarth to make sure she’d seen the surface crack.
“I can still ruin parts of you and parts of the game you hold dear. Stop testing me.” He took a breath and calmed himself.
Emilarth waited a moment while he sat himself back down and pulled out something from his draw, tracking it with his fingers.
“Sorry.” She let the word sink in and shut up for a few moments, making sure she allowed him to stew in her words. He might be the mind magic user, but Belius had never grown past his own petty jealousies and failures. Yet she’d seen a glimpse of the him he’d been before the ingestion.
Belius was still in there, beneath the influence of Michael. She just had to find a way to coax him out.
Mellow withdrew a faint light from their cauldron. It was amazing how much illumination such a tiny vial could give when everything around them was pitch black. The glow surrounded them as they muttered several alien-sounding words, effectively making the witch a soft glowing torch.
They moved slowly down the spiral staircase, watching for strange stick figure men to leap out at them, or else for another boulder to appear out of nowhere. Murmur was glad they were moving, because the boulder on top of the now-sealed entrance made her feel like she was beginning to suffocate. The walls closed in around her every time she blinked, and she had to focus on Exbo’s back to put one foot in front of the other.
“I think I’ve reached the bottom.” Mellow’s voice drifted up to her, echoing off the sides of the stairwell, ricocheting around in her head. But that was okay because it meant the end was almost there.
“There’s another tunnel down here.” Sinister had reached the bottom too.
Murmur took each step methodically, counting them inside her mind. She’d already hit forty-five and didn’t like to think how deep this went. Although it had originally been a mine, if she remembered the brief lore lesson she’d given herself.
Finally, all of them huddled at the base of the staircase, and Veranol cast another HoT on her. The damned DoT was still ticking away at her health. With another fifteen minutes remaining, it was going to get more annoying before it got better.
Mellow was handing out more vials of light, and Merlin and Exbo were opting for them instead of fire. Being in a totally claustrophobic and enclosed space, Murmur appreciated the suffocation not being magnified by abundant smoke.
“So we have a trial of strength?” Merlin mused as he turned his vial around in his hand, while the other still clutched his bow. He’d sacrifice the vial in an instant if he had to draw an arrow.
“Whatever that means.” Rashlyn sounded annoyed, and if Murmur remembered correctly, the monk wasn’t fond of the dark. She couldn’t blame her. This sort of dark was all consuming, like it could squeeze you to death without you realizing.
“I’d say it means to push on and show that we’re braver than we think.” Veranol chuckled a bit, but she could tell the defiler wasn’t exactly happy about the situation either.
They’d effectively just been booby trapped into walking down a spiral staircase into an underground warren maze. Merlin and Devlish shuffled to the fore and the rest of the raid fell in behind them.
Sinister reached out to Murmur and squeezed her hand, standing close to her. Sin’s presence alone was enough to make it easier for Murmur to breathe.
“That DoT is a pain in the ass, Mur. I keep thinking something is attacking you,” she whispered, a hitch to her voice.
Murmur squeezed her friend’s hand back and refused to let go. “I’m okay. We’ve got this.”
“Let’s go, then.” Devlish sounded tougher than his countenance projected.
Murmur could pick up on the subtle tremors in his stance and the uncertainty he projected. Gently, she nudged him a bit more with confidence. There was so much she could do with her abilities to help her friends without them even knowing.
They moved as a group, and when Dev and Merlin stepped foot on the first stones of the next portion of the dungeon, light flared up in the hall as multiple fire sconces ignited into being, two by two.
They found themselves in a wide passageway made of stone, with about twelve-foot ceilings. The height of it put Murmur at ease and made her feel less like the world was about to collapse in on her, but the macabre decorations that lined the hall didn’t register properly at first.
The smell reached their nostrils as the vision in front of them manifested. Old, decaying blood and bone. There were piles of it everywhere. It spread from the middle of the floor in a wide and thick arc that had it clinging to the walls like slime. Blood and viscera caked almost every part of the pathway. It was sluggish and congealed, dark brown with age.
Murmur gagged and had to step back as her eyes began to water. She wasn’t the only one, and Rashlyn turned to the side and began to retch. The smell of vomit didn’t improve the ongoing stench of the corridor.
To the sides, behind some of the massacred appendages and organs, she could see iron gates set into the stone, like there were jail cells along the length of this corridor.
She closed her eyes to give herself some relief, but also to feel and see if there was anything living in those despicable cells. If there was, then they were subject to the fetor of what was probably their fellow prisoners’ remains. Sending out her thought sensing nets, she found that there were multiple creatures alive in those cells. From what she could tell, they were those little green gnomes, being kept here against their will by something monstrous.
Their fear leaked out through her net and bombarded her mind with it. She clamped down her shields for a moment, needing to breathe instead of seeing what had made this slaughter out here possible.
Determined, she reached out and located the monster. Only there wasn’t just one, there were multiple. They were angry and hungry and lorded it over their prisone
rs. They weren’t humanoid, but they possessed brains because they sensed her, and Murmur had to pull back her detection of them to avoid being caught.
Even as she examined the area, she could hear their thoughts, and they were perfectly logical and coldblooded. There was no compassion in their voices, hearts, or otherwise. She had to withdraw her own empathy to make sure she didn’t trigger them.
Bringing her awareness full back to herself, she gagged as the full sense of the smell wafted through her again. “There are prisoners here, but their jailors are all around us, and if we want to free the gnomes, we need to kill them first.”
“Do you think this is the test?” Sinister asked hesitantly, like she didn’t want it to be a test of strength because she couldn’t understand why this would test that.
Murmur could see her point. It wasn’t strength like she’d thought it would be, but it was strength. In a different way.
“I think this is a different sort of strength for them. It’s asking us to do something they haven’t been able to accomplish themselves. It’s giving us an opportunity to earn their trust, in the guise of a trial. Even though it’s a mission of mercy, even though it’s a mission to save their people who are trapped by whatever the fuck I just sensed.”
“Oh.” Sinister’s face grew grim. “Well if that’s the case. What are we waiting for?”
Ruins of Curet - Cenedril Continent
Version: 2.0875 - Activated by Guild Spiral
Day Twenty-Three
Karn stood panting as they faced the craziness of the last boss of the ruins. Two wipes down and she couldn’t figure out how it was that Fable always seemed to get through dungeons so easy. These monsters were damned difficult to kill. She wiped sweat from her face, and decided that next time she relogged, she was going to adjust her realism settings, because sweating made it more difficult to enjoy the damned monster killing.
Ashin nudged her. “You doing okay?”
“Of course I am,” Karn replied indignantly. Even if she wasn’t quite as well as she let on, she wasn’t about to let others in the guild know. Doing that would negate her leadership qualities. Basically, her father would never let it go.
She cracked her neck from side to side, hoping that this time they’d get the timing right. Iriglia wasn’t the boss she’d been expecting, considering when Fable had defeated it, the server message definitely hadn’t included that name. But she’d come to suspect that there were a lot of different versions of the dungeons depending on how you reacted to it.
Risk hefted his shield and reinforced it with one of his spells as well as some sort of ointment he poured over it. Then he did the same to his amazing short sword, making its black metal gleam in the light.
He turned his head to nod at his healers before flashing a big grin at Karn. She rolled her eyes in response, but damn, did she feel the adrenaline begin to pump and the excited tensing of her muscles at the prospect of battle.
Iriglia was a massive stone construct that moved far too quickly for something of his size and makeup. He was a monk with quick reflexes and a crapshoot of abilities he could deal out at the worst possible moments.
But this time Karn was ready. Flipping her daggers into both hands, she melded into the shadows. All she had to do was make it behind the huge opponent and get to his Achilles. Her new ability should make all the difference. She hoped so anyway.
Murmur allowed her sensing nets to flow out from her, magnifying their detection abilities. The first two cells, one on each side of the corridor, held smaller gnomes. Children, if she was correct. Those weren’t guarded like the others, so freeing them first made sense.
She scowled and spoke. “Free the gnome children first. They’re in the front two cells. Keeping kids in cages is utter bullshit.”
Devlish echoed her expression, and they began to inch toward the cells while Sinister held Murmur’s hand, leading her as the enchanter closed her eyes again to get a better feeling of the layout.
“The next two cells are…I think torture chambers. I’m getting such an overwhelming sensation of fear and death wishes from those. And I believe those have jailers in them with them.” The feelings she could sense rode through her like a freight train full of bile and excrement. It lingered in the back of her throat like it was taunting her to throw up, taunting her to replace the gnomes that were being tortured.
She thought of the gorgeous city they’d visited in Brevint. How the majesty and intelligence of the gnome species shone through everything. And all she wanted to do was make the monsters doing this pay.
“I get the feeling once we free these baby gnomes, all hell is going to break loose,” Havoc muttered.
“I think that’s the whole point.” Murmur opened her eyes and glanced around at them all. “Mellow, can you cast that cleaning spell on us? You know, the one that leaves the extra forty-five-minute buff. We’re going to need everything we can.”
They’d gotten so proficient at buffing it barely took sixty seconds for them to be ready. “Open the doors simultaneously and shoo the babies up the stairs. That should get them out of the way, right?” Devlish glanced over at Murmur, and she shrugged.
“Let’s just hope they follow directions.” Jinna scowled. “And these are damned big gnomes, I’ll have you know.”
Murmur couldn’t help smiling. Jinna liked being larger than gnomes, but these ones were like radioactive kids. Larger than life and mutated. She had to wonder what it was that Richnai had been mining.
They moved quickly down the hall, and Exbo and Merlin opened the right and left jail cells using their pick lock abilities. The gates swung open and a gong sounded through the whole section. A voice spoke, hollow and bleak.
Warning. Jail Break. Imminent loss of sustenance.
“Fuck.” Jinna moved in, coaxing out the gnomes in the left cell, and after a few motions, a larger one of the kids followed him, which made the rest of them hurry after. On the other side, Exbo was having about the same luck. Humans were common on this continent, so it made sense for him to try.
The two of them ushered the kids through to the stairwell when they realized there was no way for them to exit, considering the boulder had sealed the top. They stopped at the foot of the stairs and glared at each other, only to be interrupted by the laugh of a child.
The smallest gnome stepped forward and scampered up the spiral staircase so nimbly and without any extra light that Murmur worried for his safety. Once at the top, he squeezed out through a corner Murmur would never have thought to try and exited through.
Several seconds passed, and a cranking noise echoed throughout the stairwell as the boulder began to raise.
Higher and higher until light shone down the stairwell. The rest of the kids scurried after the first and disappeared from view.
“Well. That was interesting.” Jinna frowned.
Warning. Escape complete. Replacement food provided.
“Oh.” Exbo looked crestfallen. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“I personally don’t think we’re very appetizing.” Merlin raised an eyebrow. “Let’s show them what stringy bastards we are!”
Murmur laughed, still keeping an eye on her health and the damned debuff that wouldn’t quit. “Let’s give them indigestion.”
It was good to have a sense of humor about it, and she could now. She could die. She could come back. She could log out of the game.
Now all she needed to figure out after they freed everything and killed the final boss was why the game couldn’t seem to log out of her.
Murmur frowned and stored those questions away for later. This was infuriating. She could sense that there were presences, minds all around them. But she couldn’t see them. Either that or nothing was moving around them. So where were these things? Were they like the strange crack creatures that had materialized up above just waiting for them to start walking
before they moved out of their hiding places?
“Um. Did that pile of rotting bones and flesh over there…like, did it move?” Rashlyn took a step back, sidling up to Murmur and Sin as she scanned the room.
“The one on the wall?” Havoc asked, looking a little green complexion-wise. If he wasn’t careful, he’d mix in with the gnomes really well.
“I think you mean the one sliding down the wall,” Dansyn piped up with little more than a squeak, and Murmur noticed just how quiet the bard had been since they’d entered this dungeon. He ended in a barely audible whisper, “Though it’s not sliding. I think it’s crawling.”
Murmur reached out again, scanning everything only to realize that they were right. From everything around them, she’d not even dreamed that the creatures she was sensing might be these piles of waste.
“Oh yeah.” She gulped and wished she hadn’t as the taste of the creatures surrounding them leaked in through the back of her mouth. “The presences are definitely coming from these piles of waste.”
As she spoke, they began to right themselves into bone and viscera, blood and melted flesh piles of something alive. They were low to the ground, sort of like a crocodile, with a protruding snout. The teeth placed all over the bodies, and Murmur guessed they must cover their prey and then devour them once they’d completely enveloped them. If it wasn’t that, she was sure it was grosser.
“Guys.” Murmur backed up a step, hoping they could come up with some sort of strategy to beat these things.
Havoc gulped out the words, practically choking on them. “They’re some sort of undead, but not one I can control.”
She guessed he’d tried and was suffering the repercussions of doing so. “So these slimy internal organs on the outside of their bodies beasts aren’t controllable undead and will begin to devour us if we touch them.”