Distortion (Somnia Online Book 5)

by K. T. Hanna

  “Closed to us unless he opens it, but still a part of the game world and therefore subject to its rules, and not those of their limbo.”

  The concept still sent shivers down Laria’s back, and they weren’t good ones. More like icy cold sleet rain slipping through your warm coat and trickling down your spine. The only saving grace was that his little room was still under game rules.

  “Thra got a message out to me so that I would know. You know, because there wasn’t already enough impetus on getting the damn antivirus coded.” Laria reined it in and backtracked. “She can communicate best with email. Small emails seem to avoid being flagged to alert the AI system.”

  She glanced at the time and realized with a start that it had been a couple of hours since she sent her reply. “It’s been a long while since I sent my response to Thra, but I still don’t have an answer, or anything really. I’m starting to get worried.”

  Or more worried, but Shayla didn’t need to hear the latter.

  “So. Sui kidnapped Thra in-game to try and force her to ingest the virus?” Shayla spoke the words slowly, like she was just wrapping her head around them.

  “Pretty much. He’s hoping to wear her down so she’ll go into limbo, I think? Or else just keep her from helping Rav I assume.” It was nice to share her concerns. She’d been all alone with them all night long. “I guess she sort of went along with it. I get the feeling Thra isn’t as imprisoned as he thinks.”

  “Probably. I always thought she was a little frivolous, but she seems to be serious once threatened.” Shayla sounded contemplative, and then changed the subject before Laria could respond. “How is the antivirus coming along?”

  “Not bad. The virus is a sticky little shit.” Laria cracked her neck, sudden tiredness trying to overwhelm her. “I mean. It weaves itself in intricately. Like it has tiny hooks that grab onto any strand they can find and attaches itself.”

  “Guess it’s a good thing it’s only affecting the game characters right now.” Shayla smiled wanly and settled back, this time appearing more comfortable.

  But Laria didn’t laugh with her, because she’d just had an idea. And she didn’t like the idea one bit.

  “Yeah. The AIs are susceptible, and their creations because they are made of code. But players are also made of code.”

  Shayla groaned. “No. No. You cannot be saying what I think you’re about to say.”

  Laria shrugged. “I could stop the train of thought, but that’s not going to make it any less true.”

  Shayla glared at her before taking a deep breath. “You’re saying their avatars could become infected too?”

  Laria hesitated, not really wanting to be the bearer of more bad news. “Well, yes, of course they can. But how are the characters generated?”

  She waited for the penny to drop.

  “But the headsets only tap into recent memories and general behavior patterns…” Shayla covered her eyes. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  Laria took that as her cue to continue. “The headgear taps into their minds and extracts what it needs in order to generate their class pick. Perhaps not the appearance, but the inner code. And every action and inaction in short term memory also feeds into that. If we’re not careful, this virus could theoretically spread into the people playing the game. It hasn’t yet, I don’t think, and I’m not a hundred percent sure it can. Which is good. Because right now I don’t even know how to stop the digital version, let alone anything else.”

  Somnia Online

  Continent of Tarishna - Hazenthorne Castle Version 36.259

  Activated by Guild: Exodus

  Day Twenty-Four

  Trying to herd his guild into some form of action was like trying to muster blind kittens together. Masha wanted to back away into a corner and pretend he wasn’t there. Sadly, clerics didn’t get an invisibility spell. Unless he killed them all. Then he could avoid them with his invisibility against the undead.

  He activated the guild management system and frowned as he allowed it to scroll through active members. They’d managed to gain a lot of them. He glared at the small gnome mage beside him.

  “You should have put a cap on the level requirements. Twenty-five should do it.”

  They’d managed to amass a heap of lower level new players. That needed to stop.

  Ishwa shrugged and followed the suggestion. “It was the easiest way to fill the ranks with little effort. We can weed out the bad players as we go. Sometimes people can be surprising.”

  Masha didn’t dignify that with an answer. He didn’t want to be a mass invite guild. Spam inviting was not a fun way to be recruited in his opinion. They only had three officers, himself included.

  Irritated, he continued through the tools. Ishwa had logged in late today, and Masha’d sensed a reluctance for the last while on his friend’s behalf.

  “I need to go now,” Ishwa said unexpectedly, and Masha blinked at him, his vision skewed by the dark light the guild screen was in.

  “We’re about to raid,” Masha said, but the gnome shrugged.

  “Got called in to work an extra shift. Can’t say no, you know how it is.” He didn’t sound happy about it.

  So Masha just nodded as the gnome winked out of view.

  Sitting in the foyer of Hazenthorne Castle while he prepared for raid time alone hadn’t been his plan. He’d meant to discuss several of the guild policies while they worked on the roster and dungeon plan. At least the gnome had arranged for some of the members to promote to senior members, so he worked with what he had and made them able to invite too, but he sent directions on what to look for first. Their recruits would only be a trial basis.

  Finally done with the clerical work, he still had to organize the guild’s storage for the raid. Exiting out of guild management, he had to let his eyesight adjust. He started when he realized he wasn’t alone in the foyer anymore.

  Jirald sat on top of the cupboard on the right-hand side of the entrance. The black of his armor blended in almost perfectly. So much that Masha had almost missed it. The locus assassin sat there, twirling a piece of grass in his fingers, staring at Masha.

  No, that wasn’t correct. He wasn’t looking at the cleric. He was looking past him, through him. It was unsettling, like he could see anything and everything he wanted to just by peering inside.

  “Jirald.” Masha hoped his voice didn’t sound as shaken as he felt. He hadn’t even heard the rogue come into the room. Those shadows he wrapped around himself were dense and deceptive. “What brings you here?”

  Jirald blinked, as if he’d just realized where it was he’d ended up. The sly grin that spread across his face chilled to the bone. His eyes had lightened up so much they seemed completely white.

  “Hey. Masha. Just the person I was looking for.”

  Even his tone sounded distant. Like he wasn’t actually in the room, but somewhere far away. Jirald jumped down from his perch, the piece of grass still twirling between his fingers like he was a wind-up doll.

  Masha breathed easier when he realized Jirald was actually there, even though he noted the dark aura that seemed to flicker around him. Almost like it was a glitch in the system, like it had fragmented around him.

  “Why were you looking for me?” Masha made sure to keep his tone neutral so as not to upset the rogue. Something about him seemed off kilter, like he wasn’t all there.

  Jirald’s face lit up. Well, as much as a smile could light up a locus’s face. It sort of distorted the nose slightly, giving it a comical yet macabre sense. “I have a plan. Sort of. Since you’re the only person I care about, you’re the one I wanted to tell.”

  “Sure. Share it with me,” Masha began slowly, trying to make sure his tone wasn’t going to antagonize.

  He wasn’t sure he liked where this was going, but he also didn’t want to stop being the only person Jirald cared about. In Jiral
d’s eyes, he knew that was a big role and hadn’t even realized he’d reached it.

  “We need to conquer Fable.” Jirald’s eyes were shining. “And the game. If we conquer one, we’ll rule the other.”

  Masha wasn’t sure he liked the idea of conquering. Any other time he would have thought Jirald just meant beating them to the punch. But this new Jirald with his shadows and death grips and sinister posing…no, this new Jirald didn’t mean that at all.

  Masha didn’t want to let him know about the potential cooperation with Fable. But doing that would betray the rogue, and the gods only knew what he’d do then. He wasn’t the most stable person in the guild. Understatement. But he needn’t have worried.

  “So I thought—with their offer to cooperate and go into the larger dungeons with us, we should accept that offer. They’ll never see us coming.” Jirald drew his lips back in a wide grin that showed the tiny sharp teeth of the locus, glinting in the candlelight.

  Masha nodded slowly as if he was considering what Jirald was saying. And he was, but he was also trying to assess just how the rogue was different. His movements weren’t normal, even for a locus. They held a fluidity that bespoke of something else. Something Masha could have sworn he didn’t have a few days ago. He moved like an assassin, like someone who stuck to the shadows.

  “It’s only a tentative offer. They’re still mulling it over themselves. They will have all of the keys, so if they do decide to go ahead with it, all they need from us is numbers.” Masha kept his voice even, trying to feign some disinterest due to the conditions they’d have to go into the agreement with.

  “Nonsense.” Jirald dismissed the thought with a hand wave. “They need more bodies for those dungeons. Murmur likes you. Milk it.”

  Jirald leaned forward, a slight frown on his face as his eyes swirled with darkness. Masha shuddered as he realized that whatever Jirald had become, he wasn’t the stupid hot-heated college kid angry at not playing the healer class he loved.

  Gone was the kid who had rebelled against the system the game delivered. When he’d started, Jirald had lacked the ability to apply his skills to a different class. Now though? It was clear he knew and understood his powers. In growing as a rogue, he’d amassed all the charm of a serial killer.

  And that scared Masha the most.

  “As soon as they’re out of Richnai, I’ll send her a message then,” Masha ventured carefully. “After the raid.”

  “Great!” Jirald seemed happy with the outcome, even though his eyes still seethed with shadows. Like they’d just decided the greatest thing ever. “I have to check a couple of things. This is going to be fantastic.”

  He whirled around in a coat of shadows and suddenly disappeared.

  Masha stared at where he’d been only moments before, breathing deeply. Great. The more unhinged Jirald became, the more attached he was to his character. The more he believed it was who he was.

  All Masha had done was buy himself some time. Now he had to figure out what the hell to do with it.

  Murmur stumbled, barely able to keep her balance as footsteps shook the entire chamber around them. A massive gnome began to appear. She wore what appeared to be a lace dress, reminiscent of a wedding dress. The edges of it were caked in blood and excrement, and the stench wasn’t any kinder.

  Murmur gagged and glanced over at Sinister, who couldn’t return the look because she was already throwing up. It was probably the reason her friend had never played a healer before. Couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Murmur choked down a slightly hysterical laugh.

  However, as the gnome came closer, Murmur realized this was Noichu. She’d not been expecting to fight the mother so soon. Something was off about this. A rampaging mother in a grief loop. What a cruel punishment for finding love.

  Not that there weren’t some very odd difficulties with gnomes of varying size, but she was sure love overcame that.

  Sinister sidled closer to Murmur. “What do we do? I don’t think we’re supposed to kill her.”

  “You’re the one with the quest.” Murmur shrugged, quickly glancing over her own quest log to triple check that she didn’t have anything for this. The lack of alarms sounding had already clued her in, but just in case. Her own soothing spells wouldn’t work once the target was aggro’d on them. And this one was very intent on making her way toward them.

  But Dansyn had a soothe that might work.

  “Got it.” But Sinister looked less than confident in her discovery. “I need to calm her and let her see that her son is indeed okay and alive. That her husband didn’t abandon her, and that her kin were wrong.”

  Sin scowled at her quest.

  “Wow, that sounds so easy. Why can’t we just get a kill all of these quest?”

  “Because Murmur set a stupid bloody precedent when she was nice to the Loch’ni’dar way back when,” Devlish grumbled, though he seemed to be fighting back a smile.

  “Ha ha. I wasn’t about to kill them. Just think of the pretty things we got from them. Most of us are using them to this day.” Murmur had to brace herself this time because Noichu’s footsteps were shaking the ground more the closer she got. “Dan, can you try and soothe her?”

  Dansyn shrugged noncommittally. “I have a song, and I can sing.”

  Murmur stifled a laugh. She had to watch out about playing when overtired. It made her way too giggly for no good reason.

  The wailing bounced off the walls, lending a sense of disorientation to the whole ordeal. Snowy growled, baring his teeth, and she had to soothe him along their connection to get him to back down.

  Maybe wolves didn’t like the grünlich gnomes.

  “Okay, then.” Devlish hefted his shield and swapped his axe for a hammer. “As little damage as possible while we figure out just what to do to set this mom free?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Sinister muttered, her brows clenched in deep thought. “Because I don’t do damage when I heal at all.”

  Sarcasm was just everyone’s tool of choice when they were feeling ragged. Murmur secretly loved it. Stuns wouldn’t hurt, so she could cast those. Mez wouldn’t work, so that ruled that out. All of her debuffs except her DoT were a possibility.

  So Murmur started with those. Nullify to strip magic resistance, Weakness to reduce her strength, Spellblock to slow her casting time down, Languidity to slow her attack time down, and just for fun, she used Thought Leech to see what spells Noichu was about to cast with her slowed abilities.

  “Show off,” Sinister muttered deliberately loud enough to hear. “I can’t even heal decently without doing some damage.”

  “Well, you are a blood mage. I mean, it’s in the name.” Beastial grinned as he got Shir-Khan to taunt. The yo-yo of back and forth aggro between the tanks and the pet made Noichu’s spell casting almost nonexistent.

  The grünlich gnome screamed with rage, all of her movements slowed. There was confusion in her eyes that slowly replaced the anger, like she couldn’t understand why they weren’t hacking the hell out of her.

  For a normal boss, Murmur’s spells wouldn’t have had much effect. But she wasn’t a normal by any means. She was an in pain, I-have-been-wronged bride and mother. That seemed to make all the difference. She wanted to have her life back, and she’d fight anyone who stood in her way. Which meant they needed to figure out a way to convince her they could give her life back.

  The bad thing about Murmur’s debuffs was that a couple of them cost insane mana. Mana she didn’t have endless supplies of.

  She watched as Devlish taunted and blocked an attack, as Rashlyn taunted and avoided the attack she received, and then Shir-Khan taunted, but Beastial pulled him away before he could inflict damage.

  “Ver, are you able to take over the slows? Dan, can you switch to debuffs?” She had an idea. After all, she’d used Feedback Loop to punish, why couldn’t she use it to heal?

&nb
sp; “Just the slows. We are taking minimal damage, but I want to keep reserves just in case.” Veranol nodded and Dansyn did too.

  That taken care of, Murmur kept her eye on the battle and calculated the amount of damage it would inflict. Four hundred and sixty damage before it wore off, which, given the boss’s hit points wasn’t too bad. More like a scratch, really.

  Taking a breath, Murmur reached out with her Thought Sensing and focused on Noichu’s mind. The mess in there made her recoil, but not because it was horrific, but because it was sad. The mind was a mess of self-recrimination, self-hatred, and regret. Anguish littered every thought with glimpses of Eon dead, of Erichu bleeding, and of her having been able to avoid it all if only she’d loved a different person.

  Anger leaked into Murmur along with understanding. Noichu’s rage fueled Murmur’s mind, and the enchanter could see those who were at fault, those who had done this. All she wanted was to set matters right, to make those on each side see that love was love and all this feuding shit was a waste of precious time.

  It suffused Murmur’s thoughts, seeped into her mind, and let the voices encourage her to make it so. She wanted to kill those who had made this possible; she wanted to flay them. To take their memories and cruelest deeds and make them suffer for all eternity.

  Snowy licked her hand, wetly, snapping her out of the spiral of thoughts.

  “Thanks, boy,” she muttered, shocked at how easy it had been to get swept along. But at least she knew what memories to pull so Noichu would accept them and what to show of Eon approaching them and asking to free her. That he loved them and didn’t want them to suffer. Just the right mix should do it.

  It only took a few seconds for her to wrap them all up into a ball of thought and direct the Feedback Loop directly at Noichu.

  The ball of power hit their opponent right between the eyes and sent her stumbling back slightly. She stood there, blinking for a second before she screamed in heart-wrenching agony and began to ignore any debuff still on her.

  Noichu flailed and attacked so fast, Murmur could barely keep track, especially after a well-placed dart lodged itself in the right-hand side of her chest, knocking her off her feet. Blood flowed from the wound, only slowing down to a trickle once Veranol threw a heal her way.