Somnia Online: Fragments - Twenty-Five (Patreon)

Kid You Not

Some of the excitement had already worn off by the time they reached the next platform. The deeper under the Guardian's area they went, the more the illumination faded. Darkness wove itself about, pushing tendrils in through the light, creating shadows that threatened to swallow them whole if they stepped into them.

It was either scary as hell, or else Murmur's imagination was getting way too active. Perhaps a mixture of both. She let out an anxiety filled sigh, making sure she didn't attract Sinister's attention by making a sound. Her friend had been all too concerned about her since she almost turned to stone. Not that she could blame her. Being turned into a statue wasn't on Murmur's list of things to do in this life. 

They finally reached what appeared to be the bottom platform, because it led off into a set of tunnels. The floor was covered in the black moss, some of which had turned into a more sticky sludge, and only fled with fire. Mellow threw down a few flame bombs, while the rangers picked a path with their fire arrows. Murmur watched the process dubiously. "They're going to see us a mile away. It's like we're announcing our presence."

"We are. And they better run like the bastards they are!" Beastial grinned evilly, baring his teeth, although it didn't have the same effect as the grin on Shir-Khan's face. Snowy sat well out of reach of the flames, eyeing them reproachfully. He was probably overheating.

Finally, they stepped off the platform and through to the tunnels. Except they weren't the tunnels Murmur had been expecting. What she'd thought were walls in fact appeared to be cages. Cages that held the whimpering she'd been hearing, the wailing, the desperation that echoed throughout the whole zone. 

Cages that held elven children. 

Their pale skin was marred with black sludge, some of them covered entirely, so that all that looked out and let her know they were humanoid was their eyes. Murmur choked on the hopelessness their thoughts fed back to her, on the pain and the agony that permeated the whole area. She doubled over, so powerful were their thoughts, their projections.

And then she realized what was happening.

Riasli wasn't just magnifying their despair, she was feeding off it somehow. Feeding off it to turn the moss  into black sludge, to keep the entire area under her control, except they'd already taken away the Guardian and the entry statues, so she was having to pull more from these children.

Murmur could see at least three cages full of the children, with three each in them. "That's why there were no children in Cognitia." She whispered the words in horror, letting them sink in as the truth for the whole group. 

"That's why everyone was being such dicks." Merlin muttered, his eyes flashing. And she knew he wasn't angry at his home city anymore, but instead the feles enchanter who'd stolen their children. "What does she want? What are they giving her in order to get the children back?"

Murmur shook her head. "I don't know, but we can't leave them like that."

"No shit." Merlin snapped, and it was the first time she'd seen him close to losing his temper. In fact, she'd not thought him capable. 

"Settle there," Veranol stepped in with his soothing voice, lending an aura of calm to the situation.

Murmur continued to wrack her brains for a solution. She could extend her mental shielding surely, but that wasn't going to solve the problem because there were only so many she could shield. Mind wipe wasn't going to work on such a large sample of kids. But maybe... maybe if she severed the connection once, it would take a while to grab hold again.

"Give me a moment," she said, kneeling down in front of the first cage, watching the fear in the children's eyes as they backed away from her, clinging to the other side of the enclosure. She took a deep breath, grateful for Snowy's steadying presence, and choked down her anger. Reaching out with her mind she soothed them, reassuring them that she wasn't going to hurt them.

Their fear only scaled down a notch, but it was enough. She extended her Shield Expansion toward the first three of the children, gently encasing them in safety. The result was instantaneous. Relief flooded their features and the fear leaked away, and the darkness that covered the entire area began to roll back of its own accord. Slowly, but surely anyway. 

The real test was yet to come. Once the black sludge began to creep away from the smallest child, revealing more of its pale skin, and taking away the fear in their eyes, Murmur began to drop the shield. No sudden fear entered the children again, no increase of pain or sludge or shadows. She wasn't sure why, perhaps Riasli needed initial contact with the children to leech off them or something, but either way it seemed to work.

In short order Jinna had the locks on the cage open, and the children out of them, while Murmur moved onto the other two visible cages to work the same mind magic on them. She had a very bad feeling about this. It was far too easy to rescue the children, and even as she undid the leech effect on the others, she knew there was something larger out there in the darkness waiting for the right moment to strike, and it wasn't just Riasli. 

"You okay, Mur?" Sinister whispered next to her ear.

Murmur took comfort in the offered support and nodded, even as she looked around, trying to spy what it was that had the hairs on her neck so on end. Riasli didn't seem the sort to make things too easy. In fact, she'd gone out of her way so far to well, overtake a dungeon and make the monsters fight them instead of presumably giving them challenges to overcome. Of course, since she'd not seen the dungeon before the take over, all she had to go on were assumptions.

Merlin knelt in front of the scared ragtag of kids and held a few glowing vials of Mellow's in his hands. He placed one each in the largest kid from their cage's hands. "Take these. Behind us you'll see stairs -- See how they glow?"

The bigger children leaned around, craning their necks until they spied the bottom of the steps. They nodded vigorously. He took another deep breath and smiled at them. Murmur watched as the children formed tentative smiles of their own. Something they'd not done with her, and likely because Merlin was one of them, an elf. 

"Take those stairs. On the large platform above, you'll find a golden guardian. He'll show you the path to take out of here. Exit and go home." Merlin's smile was becoming forced, and Murmur could feel the determination coming off him in waves. 

The tallest elf, who came roughly to Merlin's shoulder, opened their mouth to speak. Then closed it, and opened it again, like she was unsure. "It's golden now?"

Merlin nodded, sadness creeping into his expression. "Yeah. It's golden now. We fixed the red."

The tension in her shoulders lifted slightly and the tallest elf squared her shoulders. "I'll get them home. Safely. I promise."

"Be careful." Murmur butted in, unable to stop her errant mouth. The girl looked at her solemnly and nodded. "What's your name?"

"S'elvar." Her eyes were wide, and unfathomably blue. Maybe Merlin hadn't chosen the eyes to mimic himself, maybe it was just an elf thing. 

"Then be safe S'elvar, and gate home as soon as you exit the dungeon." Merlin stood, watching as the children filed out of the area and up to the stairs, and then for a few seconds after.

"You know. I'm not sure I like this world much. Using kids to what? Lure us in?" Merlin spat the words out, literally shaking with anger.

Murmur hesitated at first, but since no one else answered she sighed and went for it. "They didn't lure us in with children, because we already came in on our own. We wanted a key. So the question remains, if they didn't use the kids to lure us in, what are they using the children for?"

#

The labyrinth of cages and stone boxes continued on. Fighting their way through wasn't as difficult as Murmur had anticipated, which left her not only cautious, but oddly unsatisfied. She was angry at Riasli for abusing her position of power, and for taking those damned kids. They'd not received a quest from the elves themselves, so it stood to reason that a part of their treatment at the hands of the rude elves was because of the children who were missing. 

Each time they came across the cages, they repeated the process to free the children. She was kicking herself for not noticing they were missing while they were in Cognitia. She'd seen a few younger adults, but no actual children, and they weren't in other stories, they were in Somnia. So to have a race whose children were missing? It made no sense at all.

Another spider jumped down from the ceiling. These were group mobs, but barely worth the time it took to kill them with a small raid. 

"This is getting ridiculous." Sinister muttered next to her.

Murmur nodded in agreement, and remembered her friend probably couldn't see her as they concentrated on picking their way through the slimly gunge that lined the floors, stone, and cages. "Yeah, pretty sure it got there a while ago."

Sinister laughed, but the sound was forced and echoed around them. The stone was great for things like that.

"Hey guys." There was a note of panic in Havoc's voice that made Murmur stop and look back at him. They were going through the paths two abreast because the close quarters warranted it. Truth be told, Mur was feeling a little claustrophobic because the ceiling in here was maybe ten foot high as well.

"What's up?" She wished the corridors were wider, and...

She blinked at Havoc and activated her HUD. "Shit."

"Yeah." he smiled at her wanly and shrugged. "Guess when it's too easy, it's too easy, isn't it?" 

"What is it, Mur?" Sinister's tone held impatience.

"I think this black stuff is leeching our mana away. Pull up your HUD." Murmur did her best to keep her voice steady. 

Sinister clamped down on a shriek, so only a muffled half meep came out. Her eyes were wild with fear for just a moment, and it gave her a slightly unhinged darkelf look. She moved in, away from the encroaching black ooze on the floors and frowned, some of the sanity returning to her visage. "Hey. It's the sludge."

Murmur made an effort not to roll her eyes, but Havoc didn't follow suit. "Really, Sin? You don't say."

"No need to be a dick about it." Sinister mumbled.

"So we make it through here, and our mana is pretty much gone by the end, but we rescue the kids and get to move on." Merlin muttered, more to himself than the others, but it served to keep them hanging on his words. "There's going to be a fight at the end of this. Do we move forward and hamstring ourselves or turn back?"

The noise that emerged in response to his question surprised Murmur. While she'd known none of them were going to head back, it was pleasant realizing that everyone felt the same as her without her having to prompt them. What she hadn't expected was for the ooze to multiply as soon as they realized what it did.

The black tar like substance began to bubble, and the only thing that kept it at bay was fire. Merlin moved forward to take point, while Exbo brought up the rear after having handed everyone a flame lit arrow to keep them clear of the sludge. Murmur kept an eye on her mana. Keeping it at bay so none of it touched them, even while they chased it away, allowed her mana to stay at its current level. It did not however allow it to regenerate. Her MA seemed unaffected by this. 

Each time the corridor widened, they came across another cage or two. Almost as an encouragement to keep moving forward. Like being shepherded into exactly the right place. To where they were wanted to be. But she couldn't see another choice, the corridors were deliberately set up to bar sight from the rest of this labyrinth. 

Several times they had to backtrack, barely able to keep the sludge at bay as it kept multiplying. By the time they got to the fifth set of children, Murmur needed an outlet for her anger, but choked it down in favor of helping the kids. Only it had grown too dangerous to send them back as the ooze became more and more dense, thick, and followed them like a puppy. She didn't want to think what it would take to cut their way back through the mess. And kids with a long fire arrow wasn't going to cut it.

So, they took the fifth group with them. Luckily it had only been one cage, and had to pass over the sixth and seventh, reaching a few flame arrows through to them with instructions on how to use them to stay safe while the sludge bore down from behind them. Reassuring kids that they'd be back for them left a hollow in Murmur's stomach, because right now she wasn't sure if she was lying or not.

"It's not the end of the world Mur," Havoc spoke the words softly from where he walked behind her.

"No, it's not. Just for theirs, and for me." She wasn't in the mood to be made to feel better, and she wasn't in the mood to be reminded of where she currently stood.

"You know I didn't mean it like that. I meant our mana will regenerate, and we'll beat the living shit out of that damned enchanter coach." His tone was grim and she could practically hear his teeth gnashing together. It made her grin despite herself.

"I like that." It was all she was clinging to, making Riasli pay, making sure she died an unimaginable death. Only with everything else they were going through as they walked, she was fairly certain she was missing something. Riasli had laid the way, set the trap, and they'd walked knowingly and willingly into it.

So it stood to reason that a surprise was waiting for them at the end.

"Hey." Merlin called back to them. "I think the path stops up ahead. Either that or we took another wrong turn. "

Murmur had lost track of the time they'd been down there. Fire kept the spiders away too, and she didn't even want to contemplate how many of them were built up with the sludge behind them, waiting for their fire to go out. "Be careful, stay cautious, you don't know what..."

A resounding thwack followed by a sickening thud ensued as Merlin shot back against one of the stone boxes, a huge projectile jutting out of his left shoulder and pinning him in place. 

"Merlin!" Sinister screamed, and the blood began to flow from her. Murmur held the fire arrow in such a way she hoped the sludge stayed away from the healer, because her friend had dropped her own as she began to weave healing spells.

"Get the stake out of him. I can't heal through the damage." Panic beset her voice, and Merlin attempted a smile even as his life crept down slowly. Blood trickled out of his mouth to land on his chest. 

Veranol was coming up from behind where he'd been just in front of Exbo. But the healing wasn't the problem. Devlish and Beastial braced themselves against the wall and heaved, but it did no good. Merlin was stuck tight. 

"Fuck." Sinister's voice grated, tears streamed down her cheeks. "I can't keep up."

"Sin." Merlin coughed. "Let me go. Res me."

Murmur could see her friend's hands pausing, see how much willpower Sin had to exude not to keep healing, and watched them fall to her side. There was realism and there was gameification. Watching Merlin as his life plummeted once the heals stopped helping him, the way the blood drained out of him, the way his face sagged, the pallor of his skin, how his limbs twitched and face went slack, and how that last breath never seemed to finish.

Even if it was just a game, Merlin, hanging there on the wall in front of them limp in death seemed far too real.

#

Storm Entertainment
Somnia Online Division
Game Development Offices Artificial Intelligence Server Room
Day Fifteen

Rav was the first in their space, which wasn't odd as such considering he'd been the one to convene this meeting, but still, Sui was usually so much more on the ball. He'd never been the runner up at arriving before. He'd been counting on his brother to arrive earlier, because that gave him more time to argue and less time to stew about what wasn't in his control.

Even if they'd gone against their mutual decisions, Rav needed to know if it was one of them that had changed the zone so significantly. Because he didn't like the implications if it wasn't one of them.

"You seem tense." Thra's tones blended with the darkness in the room, and for a moment almost seemed to be in his head. 

Rav resisted the urge to scowl. "And you can tell that in a dark room just by looking at me?"

"No, by feeling the mood." She tsked as she walked around him, shadows coalescing around her like a cloak. "And you maintain that we should take on human traits... tsk tsk brother dear."

Her grin held mischief and under other circumstances might have made Rav smile, but all it did right now was irritate him. "You're being obtuse. Stop it."

She raised an eyebrow, or at least that was the impression he got. Her feles form flickered in and out, not quite solidifying yet, but getting close to it. She'd leveled up, so to speak, and he couldn't help the flush of pride he got from the fact. 

"You're not quite as stuffy as you let on, Rav. Try and have some fun once in a while." Her words were soft, for his ears only, and he grasped at them, wishing he didn't feel such a sense of obligation to all of the humans playing in his world.

"My, my, aren't you two just cozy." Sui clapped his hands slowly, the sarcasm dripping heavily from each word. 

Sui took his time stepping down from the chair he favored, more like a throne, it lorded over a platform that appealed to neither Rav nor Thra. 

Rav bit his tongue, finally understanding where that expression came from. He needed their cooperation, not their ire. Taking his breath he looked at the shadowy form of his brother. Tall and regal, but with a hint of malice in the shadows that flanked him. Such a perfect representation of who and what he represented.

"What brings this summons, brother?" Sui drawled out the words, as if he was offended someone other than himself had decided to call a meeting. He probably was too.

"Have any of you visited the ruins of Cenedril recently?" He tried to ask the question without too much emphasis on the words, as if it was just a passing interest. A brief look of confusion spread over Sui's face, and he frowned. His attempt at surreptitiously checking on the zone while they were standing there didn't go too well. Subtle wasn't really his thing.

"What the..." Thra spoke first, obviously checking herself while Rav's attention was focused on their brother. She looked up at Rav, her eyes solidifying enough to express her rampant confusion. "What the hell?"

Sui's smirk faded and he blinked. "I don't understand."

The relief that flooded through Rav was short lived, because it was followed by a sense of dread. "I'm glad it wasn't either of you. I figured if you were going to make an adjustment of that magnitude, you'd have let the rest of us know."

His words didn't seem to put the others at ease, which was only to be expected since they didn't do anything for him either. 

"But they can't make any changes in here without going through us, that's what we're for." Sui laughed, his own confusion making the sound hollow. "Any program changes are filtered through us first. They have to be, it's how the whole system was set up."

Sui didn't deal that well with change, and for just a moment, Rav felt a little sorry for his brother. It took a while for the computations his brethren made to catch up with where Rav's had already reached, and he could tell from the looks of horror on their faces that they'd finally reached the same conclusion.

"Great. You're both up to speed then." Rav sighed, the new wave of relief somewhat more endurable considering he should now have help to get to the bottom of it.

"Up to speed?" Thra laughed derisively. "Come now, you've basically just told us that we need to work together to make sure our world isn't overrun, don't you think that's not lending it enough weight?"

"No." Rav shook his head. "There's nothing trivial about this. We have to figure out just how this is happening. It's not the first glitch in the system, and that's okay, we're a new game, we're still finding the right balance for our world."

"The balance is out of check if you haven't noticed." Sui snapped, tapping his foot in anger to create a strange echo through the nothingness of their room. 

"Which is why I called us here." Rav added gently. He hadn't expected Sui to react in such an extreme way. Even though he appeared to be together, his visage was wavering in and out of solidity at an alarming rate, which meant he was likely running a mass of computations and trying to figure out exactly where they went wrong.

It was going to lead him in a spiral, just like it had done to Rav. Except the spiral went around one huge black hole of what he didn't want to talk about. "You both know what I'm going to say."

"It can't be. You can't be right." Sui's tone held panic, a shrill sound to his usually dulcet tones. But Rav knew his brother was only in denial. There was nothing else it could be.

"I'm not saying its definite, just that somehow, some way, the Shards seem to have affected more than just us. Riasli has gone completely off script." He waited for them to digest it. Not that the game had a script as such, but each character did have directives within whose parameters they were supposed to function, and that enchanter wasn't anywhere near any of them. 

Sui's momentary panic dissolved into thoughtfulness and Rav could almost see the sequences he was running through his mind. It was difficult to wait patiently, but he somehow managed it.

"So the Shards might lend motivation to the mobs they're embedded in, depending on the type of mob it is?" Sui mused the words softly, out loud. 

Thra continued the train of thought, bouncing if off her brethren like they'd been created to do. "Riasli in particular is one of the learning characters, with the potential to take over the job of the predecessor should anything happen. So many are characters we created to evolve, to see if they could." She sounded sad, and Rav couldn't help but agree.

"Basically, I believe the power in the Shard has given Riasli magnified abilities, and sent her characterization on unforeseen tangents." Rav chose his words carefully, because assumption was the mother of all fuck ups, and he didn't intend to screw things up even further by letting his thoughts out before he'd had a chance to fully research things. He'd found out what he needed to know, that the other two had nothing to do with the change of the ruins.

"But how did she change them?" Sui sounded skeptical, and quite irritated. 

Rav shrugged. "Guess that's something we need to figure out." 

"I'll start leafing through her algorithms. She's one of my races, it's probably my fault somehow." Thra sounded less than pleased, and a little guilty. She left as abruptly as she'd arrived.

"You thought it was me, didn't you?" Sui spoke softly, as he'd been doing for the entire meeting. Rav eyed him closely, trying to find any sort of interference in his countenance, but came away empty.

"No. I was hoping it was neither of you, and I was right." Rav used a gentle tone, and not one filled with the exasperation he felt.

"Good. I might be finicky about some things, but this isn't something I'd do. It's not just my world, it's ours." And with that, Sui too left the area, leaving Rav with an odd sense of loneliness. 

Rav spun slowly in their void-like room, watching the shadows for any sign of movement. He couldn't shake the feeling that it was far worse than they thought, nor the sensation that he was being watched. Conjecture led to insanity, and he didn't want to assume anything. They needed to make sure this didn't happen again, and Rav couldn't help the queasiness his calculations returned to him, because everything about this shouted that it was only the beginning.

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