Somnia Online: Fragments - Chapter Six (Patreon)

Mechanics

Somnia Online

Fable's Castle - Mikrum Isle - Himmel Lake

Eighteen Days Post Launch

Telvar's eyes were half closed as he sat on a small bench just outside the workshop looking out across the rest of the island and toward the city of Pelagu. But he wasn't focusing on anything immediately in front of him, no, his main focus was on overseeing what it was Murmur and her crew were up to in Hightower Castle.

Perhaps he should have gone with her himself instead of imbuing that wolf with the ability to guard her. He'd basically created another AI just for her, which he shouldn't have been able to do, and probably shouldn't have done anyway. Still, what's done was done.

Things weren't quite going the way he wanted them to for her. Hightower wasn't his castle after all, and he grimaced as he watched Fable maneuver like a well oiled machine, knowing what was coming, knowing that in this world, not even that was always enough.

"You're being rather quiet over there." Emilarth's tone was filled with about as much boredom as she could carry, and yet as he met her gaze, he realized she was anything but.

"I'm always quiet when I'm working." He mused, not wanting to give anything away, lest she suspect that he'd a hand in guiding Murmur to the dwarf castle. To guiding her into how to use her abilities. After all, Murmur was his responsibility now.

Emilarth placed a hand on his shoulder, dragging her fingernail across the back of his neck and over to the other side as she walked around the bench in its narrow path between it and the building, and sat on the other side, narrowing her own eyes and looking in the same direction.

"You're definitely not watching those two squirrels in that tree who are mating, so spill little brother. Tell me what it is you're worried about." Her words held a silky smooth quality, like someone who was used to getting her way all the time, and Telvar sighed at her.

"You never know when your snooping isn't welcome, do you?"

She shrugged, a soft grin on her face. "Snooping when you're not wanted is the best type of snooping there is."

For a few moments they sat in silence.

"Arita is yours, isn't she?" Telvar asked suddenly, and quietly, his tone lowered so that no one might overhear them.

"What if she is?" Emilarth's volume level mimicked his own.

Leaning against the back of the chair, Tel turned his head to watch his sister for a moment. "Then she's one of your key holders, and you adjusted the level that keep was supposed to be."

Emilarth shrugged good naturedly. "Maybe I did. Probably. You know me, I can't resist a challenge. The Queen she replaced was so dull and boring. I thought I'd spice things up a bit. Besides, you know as well as I do that we have to make sure the twelve keys are in circulation and difficult to obtain. So, I made it a little more challenging for your group."

"It's not my group." He said hotly, even though technically they weren't, he still felt so responsible for Murmur. He didn't want her to end up like Michael.

"You know you could just warn them, give them a bit of inside info you glean by going through the files." She nudged him with her elbow, her ears twitching on top of her head.

He looked at her with sheer incredulousness. "You've got to be kidding right?"

"Not at all. Why not protect those you value? Makes perfect sense to me." Emilarth looked back out over the island, her gaze flickering between trees like she really was watching for squirrels.

"You don't understand anything about them then." And he didn't just mean them as his group in particular, he meant humanity. "Most of them who find these sorts of environments challenging, don't want to cheat to beat it. They want to do it on their own steam, with their own skills." He sat back, crossing his arms, and suddenly realizing why he felt so uneasy. If something happened to Murmur, it would be precisely because she was too stubbornly proud to accept help, and because he had acquiesced to her desires. Telvar let out a sigh.

"Cheer up little brother. After all, she does have that marvelous spell." Emilarth stood in one fluid movement and winked at him.

"Stop calling me that," his eyes narrowed as he squinted to look up at her against the brightness in the sky. "And I knew you were the one who gave her that blasted spell. What were you thinking, you idiot?"

His sister shrugged and leaned over to place a soft catlike kiss on his forehead. "What I always am, my dear. Why make things more difficult than they have to be?"

And again, in her irritating way, she was gone, leaving Telvar to contemplate the necessity of many things in her absence.

#

As the twenty-five percent mark approached, they all spread out a bit more, glancing behind them to watch for geysers or anything that could shoot boiling hot liquid at them. Murmur stood in the same quadrant as Dansyn, and cast her shield on him, on top of Veranol's wards. With any luck, that should shelter the bard from the worst of it. She noticed Veranol prepping everyone with wards and thanked her lucky stars that she grouped with such competent players.

"Ver!" She remembered suddenly. "Can you dome the twenty-five percent mark?"

He nodded, grunting through the amount of spells he was casting. She watched him carefully, noticing how fast he had to move his fingers, and how little it seemed to matter. The spells still wove in slow time compared to how hers worked. Perhaps she was just hyper aware of everything right now, slowing things down in her head to compensate for everything.

They'd done everything they could to prepare for the next wave. Mur felt a thrill run through her. It was one of the most amazing things to kill a boss as the first group in the game. After all, know one else knew how it worked. No one else had tested out the mechanics, so there was no way to look up and prepare for what was to come.

The twenty-five percent hit, and for just a second it looked like nothing had happened. Veranon's dome went up a split second into the percentage, and Murmur thought they'd made it.

Until she realized that the high pitched screaming sound wasn't coming from the scorpion, it was coming from Dansyn who was screaming next to her.

She turned in shock to see what looked like the end of the scorpion's tail sitting right behind him, spurting an acid burning like venom onto him. His skin was melting and his face contorted in agony as the flesh dribbled into the bone, which liquified as well.

While the rangers loosed iced arrows into the stinger, Murmur couldn't tear her eyes away from her dying friend. It looked so real, so painful, so torturous. Instead of sitting outside of the dome, this stinger had transported inside it, likely because of that damned debuff they hadn't understood.

Fuck.

And then another scream echoed through to her, all within a split second that seemed like more than a lifetime.

It's like the scorpion, knowing that the shaman had figured out a way to mostly negate the damage from its most lethal attack, had doubled up on the damage its actual stinger could do, and held it directly over the budding defiler's head, unleashing a torrent of acidic venom onto him.

In a last ditch moment of clarity before his hit points disappeared completely, Murmur even tried to cast Forestall Death. She wasn't sure why, but it didn't work. Perhaps she'd cast it too late, maybe it needed to be applied before they began taking the damage that would kill them. She knew instinctively it wouldn't have mattered if her small barrier had still been on the shaman, because the damage was overwhelming.

Nothing Sin tried, and nothing any of them did, could save either of their friends.

But they couldn't lose now. Throwing her shield on Devlish as the dome fell and the wave of venom ended, she nodded at the tank, not needing to utter words for him to understand what she meant. If they didn't kill this sonofabitch down the rest of the way, their friend's deaths were going to be in vain.

"Rash, activate your heals whenever you can." And Murmur kicked herself, knowing that her friend would have been doing that anyway. And yet Rash just nodded, a look of determination squaring her jaw.

Devlish grimaced and yelled. "Cascade incoming. Torrent casting."

Havoc stepped up, and Murmur watched him cast sacrifice Pet. It took several seconds and he announced it. "Incoming ten seconds invulnerability for everyone's damage. Use the time to potion up."

Murmur stepped back, noticing how low her mana had gotten, and did just that as the bone shield kicked in, directing all incoming damage to Havoc. His face contorted with pain, but at least his health bar remained full.

The rangers unloaded into the scorpion who couldn't inflict any actual pain. Its frustration showed and it tried again to skitter back, but Devlish cast a load of hatred at it again, while Rash dodged that tail, returning hundreds of fists of fury at the damned thing. Its health was down to seventeen percent. They were so close and yet so far.

Are you guys ok?

Veranol: Yeah, but we're locked outside the room.

Murmur sighed, hoping they'd manage without them. Stay put. We'll be done soon.

She concentrated on doing what she could. Slowing and DoT-ing. All of the things. She stunned it and tried to silence it, but it's abilities were natural, and not something she could take away access to. Phase shift wasn't useable on a boss of this type. She grew frustrated and simply contributed her shield to both tanks on a rotating basis.

Finally it hit ten percent.

"Everyone burn any cool downs or special abilities you have!" She yelled out, knowing that they'd all be about to do it anyway, but screaming felt good, because otherwise there was far too much frustration bottled up inside.

Devlish raised his axe and shouted, like he was leading a battle charge. "Protection is go. 10 seconds absorption, Rashlyn is next."

The rangers sent in their flame shots, Beastial fused with his pet, Rash pulled out all the stops with her Hundred Fists and Storm. Mellow threw phials galore at it, exploding clouds around it in pretty colors of death, while Jinna hacked at it from just under the tail, and Havoc's pet cast black clouds all around it.

Then Rash swapped with Devlish, somehow transferring all that hate, and activated Dodge, followed by Phantom, quite literally dodging every single attack for a total of twenty seconds.

It was all they had, and just, only just what they needed. Had it taken another five seconds, Murmur didn't think they'd have been able to pull it off. Sinister had no mana left by the end of it, and Devlish sat at ten percent life.

When the scorpion finally fell, everyone was too spent to cheer much, but the doors opened letting Veranol and Dansyn back into the room with them.

The Sand Scorpion of Venom has been defeated by Fable.

You have unlocked the key of Venom quest.

This quest must be completed before you can leave the area. Good luck, and remember, not all keys are what they seem.

Even as the gong sounded and the system wide message flitted across her eyes, Murmur couldn't get the vision of Dansyn melting to death out of her head. Because if the game was that realistic in portraying death, no wonder everyone was worried about whether or not it would let her come back.

#

They all stood together in front of the scorpion's corpse, which glistened under the message that still hung in the middle of the room. Although now it had changed to the congratulatory message.

"You know, we should have learned by now." Dansyn said wiping at his nose. "If we think it's just going to be a quick in and out, we should probably sleep first, because it's definitely not going to be."

They all chuckled, perhaps a little uneasily.

"Yeah." Murmur said finally, kneeling down and activating the loot from the monster. She raised an eyebrow. "Pincer dagger, and pincer sword. There's also a wisdom necklace in here you healers can fight over. I'll grab the Shard and the midia crystals. The crafting mats and the cash go into the guild bank."

She stood back up and let the others fight over what they'd get, still unsure as to why the game had to give such a grisly death to one of its players. She brushed herself off, noting that her armor held off dirt remarkably well, and still twinkled like a purple twilight encasing her. The thought brought her back to Neva. She hoped the young luna would appreciate the crafting materials.

"Looks like we're stuck in here for a while then, right?" Murmur tried to make her voice as light as she could, but a heaviness was weighing her down.

"Hey Mur." Dansyn approached her, and stopped just in front. "I know what you're doing, because you always do this, no matter when or where. You always blame yourself. First up, you're not a healer anymore, so get out of the damned habit. And second, there was no one going to save me from that shit."

He smiled, and while it was a thinner smile than usual, it was genuine. "I'm just going to be more careful and observant next time. That death was solely on me, and now I have a nice and ripe vendetta against all scorpions out there."

The last made Murmur smile and she gave him a quick hug. "Thanks Dan. You shouldn't have to console me, I'm a big girl. I just didn't even suspect something like that."

He shrugged. "It'll teach us all to pay much more attention to any debuffs we have, especially if we can't remove them."

"Good point." She said, and turned around to check on everyone. None of them seemed traumatized. They all appeared to be fine. Jinna was waving his pincer dagger around and the action made Murmur happy.

"Well then, where do we go from here?" She asked, as if expecting someone else to miraculously have the answer.

"Call me gullible, but I'm pretty sure we have to exit out through the door that opened on the eastern side of the room. So kind of like we walked straight through it?" Beastial pointed at a door on the opposite side they'd entered from that Murmur hadn't noticed before. Frowning, she began to head over to it. Everyone else followed.

After all, they were stuck in here until they figured out this whole stupid key quest thing.

"Hey Mur. Congrats on twenty-nine." Sin said, her voice low as she caught up to fall into step.

Murmur blinked, not having noticed. "I wonder when that happened."

Sinister shrugged. "Does it matter when? The point is that it did."

Her friend was right, but the thing that bugged Mur the most was that two of her friends had lost a whole chunk of experience. And they all needed to stay together in levels if they wanted to beat this game.

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