Somnia Online: Fragments - Chapter Ten (Patreon)

Hidden Agenda

Somnia Online

Fable's Castle - Mikrum Isle - Himmel Lake

Nineteen Days Post Launch

Hiro tapped Telvar on the shoulder, and the dragon started, opening his eyes. His follower frowned. "Unlike you to actually be switched off."

Telvar groaned. "Bad puns are bad Hiro. I wasn't switched off, I was taking care of other matters." He pushed himself to standing and gazed out over the island. It was nice here, serene and easy to relax. Far too easy to let his guard down. With Belius running around and doing god knows what with that Jirald guy, he needed to stay on his toes.

"What is it?" Telvar asked, turning back around to Hiro.

His foreman hesitated. "I'm not entirely sure how to finish the main level without another shipment of rocks. And since I'm not sure if you're just creating them or if we're actually getting them from somewhere..." Hiro shrugged, his arms out to either side as if he wasn't sure what else to say.

Telvar smiled and closed his eyes very briefly, pulling up the information he needed to complete the task. What the players didn't know wasn't going to hurt them, but he definitely needed to get this castle finished. There was more for Hiro and the others to do out there for him that rebuilding a damned castle. Except the world had rules. There were things that had to happen in order for the world to continue in a controlled and ordered state. If they broke too many of them, Somnia would become chaotic, and Tel just couldn't let that happen.

Pity that Belius didn't seem to share the same regard. Telvar swallowed his irritation and double checked on all the data flooding through his system at once. Pelagu was beginning to grow steadily with guilds and other places setting up shops where they should be. Money was starting to trickle in to allow those who'd been placed in charge to make improvements to the city and create advancements.

The other guild had purchased a charter over on Firtulai and were about to begin their own rebuilding. Couldn't just give the guilds an intact spot, nope. They had to earn it and invest money into its upkeep, or where would the game economy go. He wondered how they'd feel when they got their quarterly land tax assessment.

And then he turned his attention to Murmur. After making sure everything else was running smoothly, it had become a comfort to watch her and her friends evolve as players, as people, and in accordance with the world. They seemed to be the perfect additions to Somnia, the type Tel wanted more of.

He tsked, proud of imitating yet another human trait. Murmur and her guild were getting ready to go up against Hidden. He wasn't looking forward to that fight. While he didn't know everything, he did know the basics, and he worried for the locus enchanter. Not that it would do any good, she rarely listened to anyone else, and she wasn't about to stop playing the game just because she was told it could be detrimental.

He saw them gather and step into the arena, watched as the bard activated Hidden, and spent the next hour in rapt fascination as Fable discovered the hardships of the first of their tests for the keys.

#

Murmur sprung into action, staying to Hidden's right hand side because his distanced attacks seemed to shoot out from his left hand side. She could only hope that this particular opponent hadn't learned from them yet, hadn't retained the information because the encounters had been reset. If they never finished the encounters then surely it wouldn't remember them, because it reset them to what they were before.

However, if it died, it'd remember. It wouldn't make sense for the enemy, especially in quests this difficult, not to remember. She took a breath, firing off her debuffs to weaken and slow it, to make it easier to hit. All in a split second before applying her DoTs and making sure that Snowy was safe with the other melee, out of Hidden's direct range.

Meanwhile, Devlish stood, black aura flowing around him, giving him a ghost like ambience. From what Murmur could see, he pulled out all the stops. He boiled its blood, cast all his bleeding DoTs, and used Terror and Hatred on cool down. Even so, Hidden was difficult to track, and unpredictable in its movements.

If she took her eyes off his footprints for even a moment, she fell behind in judging where she needed to be, and only narrowly avoided his right fist as he lowered himself to do a sweeping kick out to the left, because Snowy dragged her out of the way. Her breath came quickly, and she refused to let panic set in. They needed to keep this up as long as they could, or they'd never get to know the fight.

She didn't even want to contemplate the fact that there were five other enemies waiting for them.

Hidden's health whittled down fairly easily. Which made a wave of foreboding wash over her. Even though it seemed difficult because they were constantly dodging and having to be aware of his attacks as he cast them, it all felt far too mechanical, far too easy. She ran the riddle over in her head again and fixated on the line specifically related to Hidden.

Leave the hidden far behind

Leave hidden behind... wait. Heart in the stone.

She turned, forgetting for a moment that she needed to keep an eye on where the statues feet were, forgetting everything except the fact that they'd not looked deep enough into the riddle.

"Bring him over to heart!" She yelled, and Snowy didn't yank her out in time.

A huge fist smashed down on her, crushing her legs and making her scream out in agony. The pain ripped through her like her bones had actually been broken. Shock made her shake, and she began to hyperventilate. Dansyn raced in, replacing whatever buff it was he used with raid speed and dragged her out to the edges. "You'll be ok."

One look at her legs and Murmur highly doubted that. Blood seeped out, and she could see bone straining to break through the fabric of her pants. And then a heal hit her, and miraculously, just as painfully the bones mended themselves. She screamed again, and Snowy licked her hand, leaving a strange sort of numbness behind, like he had a sort of anesthetic drool ability or something. Murmur shook her head, watching the rest of her guild raid battling it out.

"Bring him over to the heart statue and let him smash it." She called out, glad to feel the pain in her chest was fading. The shakes began to subside and she told her brain off for thinking this was real, and yet she couldn't blame it. Her pain receptors were certainly fooled.

Devlish was glancing back at her between fending off blows with a very skeptical look.

"Just trust me." Murmur pushed herself back up and ran back out so that if they needed to Evac, she'd be in range of her group. "Within the stone find the heart or something like that. You can't get in through the stone of the statue without smashing it apart. So just do it."

Devlish shrugged, and Rashlyn ran behind the heart, peered out the other side, and taunted the huge dwarven statue. It only glanced at her, and then went straight back to pummeling Devlish. Already down to sixty-five percent, Murmur frowned. It seemed he didn't even have any special attacks. Was Hidden's purpose only to traverse across to the heart and smash it?

"Dev. Put your back into it. We need him to go smash that other statue." She snapped this time, which earned her a glare from Dev.

"Careful, Mur," Beast teased as he managed to dodge out of the way of a sweep. "I can see raid bitch com..."

But whatever it was he was going to tease her with, he stopped as soon as she sent a glare in his direction. She didn't give a fuck. If she was going to call out her bitchy side for anything, it was for when people wouldn't god damned move when they needed to. "Okay. Can you maneuver him around so he kicks out at only it? Like don't destroy the others or I'm pretty sure we'll fail."

Dev grunted as he began to maneuver his stance to bring the monstrosity in line with where it needed to aim. "No pressure of course. You're lucky I danced with this guy six times before this." He was grumbling but she thought there might be a hint of pride under it.

Finally, with Hidden positioned in the right place, and most of the raid standing with her, Veranol muttered just loud enough for her to hear. "I really hope you're right about this." Just as Hidden executed its wide attack, directly at the Heart statue.

#

The force of the blow sent Rashlyn flying into the projected barrier around the arena. She hit it with a sickening thud, and fell to the ground as fifty percent of her life disappeared immediately. However, it also cracked the heart statue all the way up the middle, sending tendrils of fractures racing through the whole thing, including the base. Slowly, it began to crumble, bits chipping off and plummeting down into the sand, sending Snowy and Shir-Khan scurrying back to stand with the rest of them.

Meanwhile, Hidden stood up in one fluid motion, saluted them, and froze back into a statue.

Murmur blinked at the surroundings, at the still disintegrating statue in front of them. It fell away, revealing nothing but dust and air and then finally in the base - what appeared to be a still beating heart. Not the pretty heart shaped icon that people gave each other on valentines day. No, this was an actual beating heart.

One is fought and two are done
Don't stop yet you haven't won
Sometimes you must use your mind
Though brawn is never far behind
Sense the pattern follow it
Four still left and then the pit
Don't give up, do not tarry
Keep it up go find that key

Devlish rolled his eyes. "Be nice if we could get at least some of this in clear and plain text, right? Like two down four to go. Then there's a pit and you'll get the key. Right?"

Jinna chuckled, his beard moving with the motion. "But then anyone could do it. A lot of people just throw firepower at these things. I think it's genius to mix both fighting and thinking. I mean, sure we thought Hidden was a pure fight. But it wasn't. Still, if we didn't learn it and treat it as such, we wouldn't have survived long enough to drag it over the whole arena and smash the base of the heart, would we?"

When the dwarf was right, the dwarf was right. Murmur gave him a quick hug and turned to face the base that was no more.

Sinister shifted uncomfortably, wringing her hands. "Is it just going to stay there beating? Like not doing anything but being a heart that squelching out blood because it's like... not attached to anything?"

Beastial shrugged. "Probably. I mean, I can't see anything for it to attach itself to, can you?"

Sinister scowled and opened her mouth, but Murmur beat her to it. "Yet. Can't see anything yet?"

Veranol raised an eyebrow, still busy recasting buffs. "Got an idea Mur?"

She shook her head uneasily. After all, it was just more of a hunch. "It's a beating heart, it's got to belong somewhere, right?"

"When you put it that way..." Mellow glanced around and walked up to hide behind Mur. "I'm staying here."

She laughed and stepped away. "No you don't. You're a big bad witch. You should be protecting me."

Mellow beat on their chest. "Big witch, melt you in my cauldron."

"That's the spirit!" But Murmur sighed, something about the frozen Hidden statue, and the still beating heart were grating on her nerves. She needed to figure out the rest of the riddle and what they needed to do. They still had four more obstacles and she didn't for one second think that would be the end of it. Why only have a few obstacles to the key when you could have a few obstacles to the actual fight for the key?

"So now, hate and love?" Jinna offered, his brow scrunching up and making him look like he only had one eyebrow.

"Do you think Hate has to smash Love?" Sin asked. "Because that seems pretty legitimate to me."

"Who burned you?" Beastial asked, backing up a few steps, just as sand began to swirl in the middle, making any comeback Sinister had for him die on her lips.

It created a small whirlwind, ripping in the surrounding sand and twirling in place like it was watching them.

"I think that's our cue? Like it's telling us to hurry up or get wiped out?" Dansyn hopped from one foot to another, his face more worried than Murmur had ever seen it.

"Let's try the drag and destroy then?" Devlish offered as he activated all his self buffs and began to jog over to Hatred. "Sort of ironic, I'll be holding agro with hatred, huh?"

Rashlyn blinked, sprinted and stood in front of him so fast, Murmur couldn't believe she didn't sprout wings.

"No!" The monk yelled. "Don't you see? It's Hatred. In order to become love... like, wouldn't you have to be nice to it?"

Murmur stopped her pursuit of them and ran through the idea in her head. It made so much sense it was ridiculous no one else had noticed it. "Wait. So... I need to like sooth it? Like use my charm maybe?"

Everyone looked from Murmur to the whirlwind in the middle of the room that was steadily growing bigger. Why the fuck hadn't they thought this through more before they activated the event? She skimmed through her abilities, a little worried. After all, she had Snowy. If she used Charming Cooperation, it would reduce her emergency MA permanently until it broke. Trying not to let the steadily growing whirlwind irritate her, or hurry her, she glanced through all of her abilities and spells. After all, she sort of had a staple that she used in each fight. Because of this, she didn't remember every spell because of how fast she'd gained them. There was always a downside to power leveling as fast as she could. Considering she also had to know the most commonly used ones from her guild mates or else she'd never be able to direct battles.

And her thoughts were spiraling because nerves were kicking in. Murmur took a deep breath and tried to center herself, thrusting into the earth with her grounding ability. A calmness settled over her and brought a smile to her face. Considering she'd not been totally thrilled with her hybrid choice, she could now see the wisdom in it.

Stepping over to the Hate statue, she cocked her head to the side and walked around it, keeping the whirlwind in her peripheral vision at all times. At least it grew pretty slowly. Hate's eyes followed her, like they were the only thing alive in the whole statue. She breathed in deeply again, grounding herself and not letting her thoughts leak from the tight bubble she held them in.

If she used Soothe, Allure, and thought projection, she might have a shot.

Targeting it, she cast the first spell. Level eight Soothe. It washed over the statue in a sort of cascade of soft, partially white light. Its eyes looked at little less crazed, or at least Mur hoped it wasn't her imagination. In the corner of her sight she thought the whirlwind might have shrunk slightly. Either that or she was just being too hopeful.

Then she made sure her thought projection was soothing, helpful, well-meaning. She targeted it with an understanding that sometimes everyone got into a bad mood, and sometimes it was okay to not want others around you. The thoughts blended into one another, creating a friendly and yet distanced cushion that was there for it to rest against of fall upon. Its eyes never left her as she moved around it, the head twisting in an unnatural fashion, so she stopped and reversed, because didn't pain make everyone else angry?

She could feel the eyes of her guild mates on her, see the whirlwind definitely getting smaller. So she cast Allure on it, and this time the eyes lost their red lines, and the expression in them softened somewhat. Not that she could breathe easily yet, but it was looking more and more like Rashlyn had been correct.

"It's all okay. We can get you where you want to be." She spoke the words softly, in as gentle a tone as she could manage, placing what she hoped was the right amount of suggestion behind them. Beckoning to the statue to come down from its pedestal, to come with her.

She didn't think Charming Cooperation would work. This wasn't a beast that would take kindly to any type of control. Snowy's eyes never left her either, and she wondered just why he'd let her cast it on him. Perhaps it was because he wanted to be counted as one of the group.

Veering her thoughts back to the current, she kept up the smile, even though it made her cheekbones ache, and she watched as the stone monstrosity finally placed its feet on the ground and took a couple of steps toward her.

"See? You need to find yourself first, to forgive yourself. And then you can let yourself love."

All of a sudden the statue began to turn, faster and faster until it became a blur standing all too close to her. But she didn't want to break the spell. She could still see that it was listening to her, and that whatever this was, it was part of the overall solution. Murmur bit her tongue to keep from changing her pitch.

"That's right, get it out of your system." What the fuck was she saying? "Be free, and be loved."

Faster and faster, until the blur was barely visible. And then, with a resounding crack like a thousand fireworks at once, the statue exploded in a rain of sand, showering them all. When they blinked through it, Hate was gone.

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