by K. T. Hanna
She frowned at the description. The cautions were even vaguer than most of the quests in this world. She knew it could help divert aggro, which was awesome, but surely it had other uses too. Could she use it without a target?
Standing up, she activated it.
Right next to her, her body began to materialize like it was being made by a 3D printer. Its legs filled in first, until her entire body looked back at her, the perfect mirror image. Now that was entirely entertaining. The endless possibilities for the spell made her grin, and she studied the clone in detail for the full forty-five seconds.
Every detail was perfect. From the galaxy like eyes, right down to the rip in her robes. It could probably even fool her friends. There was potential for much fun! Maybe even a bait and switch for Jirald. No, that was too juvenile. Maybe.
Then her double disappeared.
She activated it again, not even blinking at the drained forty-five Mental Acuity. This time as the clone filled in within a second, she directed it to walk behind, her unsure that it would do so. But it did. Forty-five seconds worth of commanding it with her thoughts, to move around, jump, run, and skip. Definitely a whole range of shit she could do with it. By the time it dissipated again, she appreciated the Clone Warp ability a hell of a lot more than she had.
Murmur shaded her eyes and stared at the artificial yet all-too-real sun, an idea forming in the back of her mind.
Surely her parents had already tried rebooting her headgear. After all, that’s just what one did on the odd occasion that a computer wasn’t working its best. It got rebooted, or turned off and on. Except if it stored information from her scan in there, was there going to be anyway for it to be restored. Did it save it in the anchor they had in their home perhaps? In that case maybe even this version of herself would no longer be available. Maybe she’d just disappear.
All she’d wanted to do was play a damned video game, and now look at her. Whatever was happening to her, it was occurring here, here in this world with its vibrant colors, its three-dimensional characters, and quests that were like no other she’d ever experienced, that seemed to tap into her head, just like the headset and give her hints she didn’t know she needed until they happened.
Grumbling, she sat down and began to research what she could of other class skills. Most of the information available to her was vague, but at least the online functions in the game were still available to her. It seemed, as usual, that guilds were protecting anything they could claim an advantage with, by secrecy. There weren’t many reports of exact hidden-abilities yet. The game hadn’t been out for long enough. She couldn’t blame other guilds for doing exactly what she did with Fable in order to try and maintain an advantage.
Finally, after a lot of digging, she managed to uncover basic skill lists up to and including level sixteen. Leafing through she found blood mage, dread knight, rogue, ranger, witch, monk, necromancer, bard, and shaman. The amount of information was a tad overwhelming with abilities like Sneak-Shot, Hamstring, Venom, Boil Blood, Backlist, and Bellow. And then there were the spells. So many freaking spells. Siphon, Sicken, Shackle, and Despair. How the hell was she supposed to keep all these together in her head? She groaned and moved the lists into her notes section of the game so she could reference whenever she had downtime. Then, she leaned back, looking at the sky.
A moment later her skin crawled, and she turned around slowly, trying to find the source of the unease. It wasn’t coming from her sensor net, but for it still felt like someone was watching her. Scanning around the island, she couldn’t place anything. No one was in her vicinity, and the workers were focused on the rebuilding. Just as quickly as the sensation had appeared, it was gone, leaving her to wonder if it was just a bit of paranoia. She leaned back, trying to relax again.
Suddenly a wave of tiredness washed over her, lingering on her skin for a few seconds like a weighted blanket. She balked under the pressure of it, wondering if it was linked to the previous sensation. Perhaps her mind did need to rest from the craziness that went on here. Maybe it was possible to sleep here, if she was stuck in-game anyway.
Come to think of it, if she went to sleep, couldn’t she just rest limitlessly? After all, her body was doing the same thing back in the real world. What would it really matter?
Almost ready to sink into a spiral of listlessness, Murmur suddenly sat up. This wasn’t Wren talking, and it definitely wasn’t Murmur thinking. These thoughts had come on suddenly, and while she was questioning almost everything, she didn’t feel resigned to an unspecified fate yet. Why then, was she suddenly feeling so morose?
Pushing herself to her feet, she glanced around. Telvar wasn’t anywhere in sight, in fact, she was quite certain he was avoiding her. Hiro and the workers were busily tending to the castle, and she noticed belatedly that they seemed to have begun building the towers that would house the drawbridge. She blinked at it, considering it carefully.
No one on the island seemed to be out of the ordinary. Therefore, whoever or whatever had nudged her thoughts into spiraling in this odd direction was someone she’d met recently. The only new person that could be was Queen Arita, and the only foreign object she’d received and touched recently was that damned disc the woman gave her with the insignia on it. Whipping the piece of obsidian out of her pocket, Murmur inspected it, this time using her robe to hold onto it so she didn’t directly touch the thing. Perhaps the originally touching it with her hand took a while for the effect to leak through. Like a slow poison. It had an off feeling about it, perhaps not toxic in the literal sense, but sinuous and dark, tugging at her mind like a fishhook caught in its prey. It had to be the source of her recent unease too. She couldn’t believe she’d not realized it before.
“To hell with this.” She whispered, ripping off a piece from the bottom of her robe and wrapping the thing up with it. Then she dropped it back in her pocket for a moment, and focused on her hands. It was worth a shot—Cancel Magic worked on mobs, so logically it should work on some magical effect she’d received. She watched as her runes lit up when she cast it, a green tint underlying the purple flickered before her arms glowed at their full power and then returned to normal. Her head immediately cleared; all of those spiraling thoughts suddenly had ridiculously logical ways for her to work through them. While she knew depression was real, she’d never personally suffered from it. She wished Cancel Magic could work for everyone, but knew it was so much more than just wrong headspace. Arita’s medallion might have killed someone else, someone whose brain would have reacted differently. Who knew how something like that might carry over into the real world? That something like that existed in-game only made Murmur angrier.
She stalked toward her castle yet again. As she rounded the corner to head down to Telvar’s lair, she stumbled to a stop, gaping in surprise. The lower level was bustling. There were so many workers gathered around, it was all she could do not to gape at the whole area.
Hiro stood ordering people back and forth with rocks that matched the old ones practically perfectly. Sawn and sanded wood stood prepared and ready for building. She watched as mortar was mixed right in front of her. The appearance of so many materials meant the drawbridge was not only finished but fully functional. It also meant that all of the crafters Beastial had been recruiting would probably be arriving soon.
To work on their castle.
Fable’s castle.
Murmur smiled and almost forgot what she’d come to see Telvar for. Shaking her head to clear the new thoughts that were trying to intrude on her objective, she filed them away for later Murmur to deal with.
She didn’t make it farther down than the torture room. The dragon lord was standing in the middle of it behind what she thought had previously been the torture slab; it looked nothing like it had two days ago.
The walls glistened white, and the floor had been smoothed over into a concrete appearance, with dark grey swirls that mimick
ed dragon scales. A soft shimmer encased the walls as an overhead lamp shone brightly, making them sparkle with mage-light, and the fireplace had been returned to its former glory, minus all the human remains previously scattered there.
In fact, it even looked livable. Perhaps how actual kitchen quarters in an old castle might appear. Clean and friendly.
“You approve, I take it?” There was an odd tone to Telvar’s greeting, like he wasn’t exactly sure where he stood with her since their last conversation pretty much been an argument.
Murmur nodded, spinning in place to get a full view of the room. It looked nothing like the torture chamber had. So much had changed in the space of a day. “When did you do all of this?” She whispered, unable to keep the wonder out of her voice.
Telvar laughed. “You forget what I am.” In a way, he sounded sad.
“Can you really just switch up things and create whatever you want?” She wasn’t too sure the dev team would stand for that, and was surprised when Telvar laughed again, but this time with a full-throated response.
“Silly. I’m a dragon. And as a dragon lord I have powers, magical powers. Adjusting this? But a smidgen of my ability.” This time there was a twinkle in his eyes that had nothing to do with whatever AI program commanded him. Right now, Telvar was as real to her as any of her living and breathing friends, and for just one moment, she found it totally terrifying.
Telvar held the piece of tattered cloth that she’d wrapped around the amulet to guard its effect in his hands. Then he placed it on the beautifully white stone in front of him and bent down so he was at eye level with it. “This is what she gave you?”
Murmur wasn’t sure what it was in his tone of voice, but it almost sounded like anger tinged slightly with amusement. “Yeah. She said it meant I was a friend of hers, and could call upon her at any time, however the latter would incur a debt in response.”
“Yes.” Telvar sounded overtly skeptical, his lacerta brows knitting in an almost comical manner. “So, there’s bad news, and bad news.”
Murmur raised an eyebrow. “I guess we’ll start with the bad news then?”
But Telvar didn’t smile in response like she’d thought he would. Instead his frown deepened. “This is a leech stone. Not that it wouldn’t grant you passage back to her, and it could definitely be used to call her to you. But this—this stone will leech at your psychic energy, at your magical energy. And you my dear, have a lot of both. No wonder she found you fascinating.”
“Why are you still scowling? Is it attached to me or something?” Murmur took a step back like the thing was going to burn her, glancing around herself to see if there were tendrils reaching from it.
“No.” He shook his head, biting his lip, which seemed like a feat of facial acrobatics for the lizard. “You cancelled its effects. Just in time I think. If you’d have waited any longer, your spell wouldn’t have been powerful enough to cancel this. I’m trying to figure out her reasoning behind giving this to you.”
“Her reasoning?” Murmur crossed her arms and leaned against the island.
The dragon sighed and stood back up. “I think I know what she’s a part of, but I can’t figure out why Thra would find this amusing.”
“Thra?” Murmur’s interest was piqued.
Telvar waved the question away with his hand. “Never mind. I’ll figure it out when I see them again. Still, it’s not what I expected from Hazenthorne, which is perhaps entirely her point.”
Murmur rolled her eyes. “Make sure you keep me uninformed when you find out.” She bit out with sarcasm.
Telvar paused, eyes narrowing as he suddenly really focused on Murmur. “Why do you have that?”
“Have what?” Murmur blinked at him and the sudden change of subject, already beginning to get annoyed again. She really wished he’d stop doing that. He might think she was capable of mind reading, but no one had bothered to show her how it was done. In which case, it was bloody difficult to figure out how to do it on her own.
“You have one of the getashi—the smooth black rock in your inventory. When did you get that?” His eyes were suddenly fierce, something red and dark in them, something she’d not seen before. Except it wasn’t greed, nor was it hunger; it was a tinge of anger at her from having picked up something he seemed afraid of.
Apparently the rock Belius wanted was dangerous. Good to know. “I got it when we killed the Brute. He dropped it.”
“You’ve seen Belius since then though, so why did you not give it to him as requested? I know you have that quest.” Telvar’s tone was soft, lulling, as if wanting her to tell him the truth, all of it tinged with a hint of desperation she didn’t understand.
It wasn’t a problem to tell Telvar the truth. In fact, she had a feeling that not only was refusing to hand it over to Belius until she had more answers the right thing to do, but letting Telvar know what her motivations were would also help. Except what if everything she was thinking was because of some outside pressure? Clamping her shields down as tightly as she could, she waited a few moments. When she didn’t feel any differently, she spoke, trusting in her gut.
“The first time I gave him one of these getashis it seemed to absorb into him. A glow hung around him for a moment, his eyes shone darkly, while his whole body took on a feral gleam.” Murmur shrugged. “I don’t know what this thing is, but when I gave him the first one he went sort of...evil for a split second. Made me very uncomfortable, so I’m not inclined to give him an item that might cause that reaction again. At least not until I know what it does.”
Telvar watched her, the fire in his eyes replaced by thoughtfulness as he leaned against the former butcher block. His eyes blinked as if a lens shuttered over them quickly. He shook his head and frowned. “Once more. Give me the condensed version. I was battling one of my algorithms for a few moments there.”
Algorithms? Battling them? A thousand questions popped into Murmur’s head, but she pushed them to the side, slotting them away again. “I don’t trust Belius and therefore will not give this to him until I know why he wants it, what it does, and why it’s me who’s had to get them.”
The dragon lord nodded, and for a moment Murmur swore she could see strings of numbers running across his eyes. “All good reasons, of course. All excellent reasons.”
“What about you?” She asked on a whim, wanting to challenge him and see how he reacted.
He blinked. “What about me, what?”
“Do you want it?” Murmur wasn’t sure what made her ask the question, but she felt the burning need to know if the lacerta she’d chosen as her ally was also power hungry, just hiding it better.
Telvar shook his head. “Not in the way you’re thinking. Not in the way Belius wants it. The getashi means something different for each of us; at least, that’s the theory I’ve come up with. For Belius, he would absorb their knowledge, and all their attributes—both the good and the bad. For myself, I would study them in order to understand what they hold and perhaps figure out an application of their information. And Thra, well. She would—I have no idea what she would do.”
“Study them? So you do want it?” She pushed forward with her questions, determined to get to the bottom of it, determined to figure out just who she could really trust, or perhaps how far she could trust people. Blind trust was a myth. Logic wouldn’t allow her to do that.
Telvar sighed, the sound inordinately sad.
“I—” but he paused, rubbing at his temples with each hand. “I don’t wish them to become a part of me.” He froze for a moment, his gaze suddenly vacant until it snapped back with a shock that jolted his body. “Give me a moment, there’s something that requires my full attention. Please stay until I return.”
Murmur watched Telvar as his eyes grew black. The void in them expanded until they encompassed the sclera. His chest stopped moving. His shoulders sagged. And he lost every semblance of l
ife right there in front of her, whittling him down to nothing but a husk.
Storm Entertainment
Somnia Online Division
Game Development Offices Artificial Intelligence Server Room—Limbo Sector
End of Day Six
Rav whirled into the space they used for gatherings. The void was dark, black, and lifeless, much like they had been when they began this journey.
“What?” He narrowed his gaze, taking his lacerta form automatically, and his tail swished angrily behind him. He’d been right in the middle of something important, right in the middle of finding out what his siblings might be up to. Because it wasn’t like they were going to tell him if he asked. Abandoning his form halfway through an important conversation irked him severely.
Sui raised an eyebrow, having long since taken his locus character as his own. It wasn’t even lazy modeling on his behalf; he just seemed to prefer it that way. “What was so important? It couldn’t be imparting pertinent information to a certain human, could it?”
There was a dangerous edge to his voice, and Rav ran over everything in his mind, making sure he’d not missed something before he replied. “I’ve been trying to fix the problem we created.” It took everything he had to not swap the we with you.
“Problem?” Thra’s tone sounded perturbed too. She glanced accusingly at Sui. “You’ve got to stop calling us to you like we’re your subjects, because it’s getting downright irritating. There are some things I can’t run with only subroutines. Coming here requires focus and precision, a certain set of ingredients I use when being myself in Somnia.”
Rav did his best to hide his shock, because Thra was usually more docile. It seemed Sui had woken a sleeping giant. Rav took a step back, allowing the shadows to creep over him a bit, and watched in amusement.
Sui, however, apparently still had a lot of social skills to learn, despite having had constant contact with people in the roles he’d given himself in the game. Not that they didn’t have the chance to oversee everything, but interacting directly was definitely more fun, and a much better learning experience.