Somnia Online - K.T. Hanna (best black authors .txt) 📗

Table of Contents

Title Page

Map of Tarishna

Map of Cenedril

Also by KT Hanna

Previously in Somnia

Chapter One: Reveal

Chapter Two: Regret

Chapter Three: Underwater

Chapter Four: Hold Your Breath

Chapter Five: Engage

Chapter Six: Moving On

Chapter Seven: Underneath

Chapter Eight: Hippos

Chapter Nine: Moving Under

Chapter Ten: Pivya

Chapter Eleven: Too Easy

Chapter Twelve: Always Right

Chapter Thirteen: Sheladrios

Chapter Fourteen: Rescuer

Chapter Fifteen: Sibling Rivalry

Chapter Sixteen: Reward

Chapter Seventeen: The Keys

Chapter Eighteen: Reset

Chapter Nineteen: Self-Analysis

Chapter Twenty: Preparations

Chapter Twenty-One: The Fountains

Chapter Twenty-Two: Prison

Chapter Twenty-Three: Spiked

Chapter Twenty-Four: Lease Expected

Chapter Twenty-Five: Surprise

Chapter Twenty-Six: Impossible Quest

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Influence

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Hidden

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Riasli

Chapter Thirty: Around the Mulberry Bush

Chapter Thirty-One: Abra Cadabra

Chapter Thirty-Two: Frenemies

Chapter Thirty-Three: Throne Room

Chapter Thirty-Four: All Against One

Chapter Thirty-Five: It's the End of the World as We Know It

Author's Note

Acknowledgments

Landmarks

Cover

SOMNIA ONLINE: SYNERGY

Author: K.T. Hanna

Cover Artist: Marko Horvatin

Typography: Bonnie Price

Formatting & Interior Design: Caitlin Greer

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 Katie Hanna

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-1-948983-30-3 (Trade Paperback Edition)

ISBN-13: 978-1-948983-31-0 (Hardcover Edition)

ISBN-13: 978-1-948983-29-7 (E-Book Edition)

Somnia Online:

Initializing

Anomaly

Fragments

Dissonance

Distortion

Fusion

Synergy

Last Chance:

Rise

Rebel

The Domino Project:

Chameleon

Hybrid

Parasite

Dawn & Bonnie

For welcoming me and always being there.

Michael and Riasli grow stronger, causing glitches throughout the system and destabilizing dungeons worldwide. The system can’t handle much more disruption.

Somnia becomes more than just a voice in Murmur’s mind, and is close to manifesting fully. With more AIs gaining awareness and developing their own personalities, Somnia faces a race to system overload unless the virus is conquered.

Fable and their allies face dungeon after dungeon, their minds tempted by the virus at every turn. Murmur’s mind manipulation pulls her into darker options, manipulating those closest to her. Just when she thinks they may all be safe, Sinister is ripped from her arms into the Glacier Lakes by a tentacled monster.

 

Sinister disappeared through the portal with a yelp, the sound cut off abruptly once she was fully through. A half second past in complete silence before Murmur managed to will herself into movement. Without giving a second thought to the tentacles waiting to snatch anyone who got close to the portal, Murmur jumped through it, her upper arm wrenching out of Havoc’s grasp as he tried to stop her.

Sin was already in there, taken against her will, and Murmur wasn’t about to let anything bad happen to her. She sent out a shockwave of thought through her sensing net as she sailed through the opening, broadcasting the thought out that they needed to rescue the bloodmage, that the entire raid had to go through this dungeon anyway, be damned with sleep.

Hesitation spread through Murmur as the cold hit her upon landing on the other side. Maybe she couldn’t handle this by herself after all.

She glanced up at her buff icon: Boon of Ice. Though she could feel the wind like she wasn’t wearing armor, at least it was keeping her warmer than the surrounds would have her otherwise feel. Murmur frowned at the soft ground she stepped onto, the lip of the landmass in the middle of the lake with the skeletal remains of the upper floors of a castle. Sounded about right. Of course, she wasn’t going to land somewhere she could easily gather forces. She tested her weight on the surface, the part of her mind still trying to find Sinister quieter while she assessed the situation.

Tiachi chattered nonstop at her ear, shivering as she clung to one of Murmur’s hair strands. But Murmur wasn’t really paying attention; she was listening for whatever she could hear that might lead her to Sin. Her mind focused on the presences she could sense around them. All of them large, and all of them intelligent. Damn it. It was far easier to fight stupid opponents than it was to fight the ones who could think strategically.

Still, she could feel Sin’s presence, sense her mind, but not quite reach her. Just a few moments of quiet was all Mur would need while she tapped into the power she could feel in her chest. She pushed the sensation of strangeness into the back of her thoughts while she concentrated on locating Sinister. The bloodmage appeared to be in the water. In the ice-cold water as the towering castle above them loomed out of the freezing liquid.

Underwater breathing. Wasn’t that a thing Sin had? Murmur had it. She pushed down at the panic, trying to seal it away in its own little box. It wasn’t going to do her any good like this. And panic certainly wasn’t going to help her rescue Sin.

Snowy tugged on her robe, gently at first and with more immediacy thereafter. Murmur glanced down and realized he was pawing at the ground where it went down into the icy depths. “She down there then?” she muttered, casting the water breathing spell on herself. A whole fifteen minutes. That was going to be a bitch to recast if the raid ended up, as she suspected, underwater.

Murmur dove in, the water encapsulating her like a forming crystal. At first the cold bit into her but then the Boon kicked in, and the cold drifted away. It took a while for her eyes to adjust to the water vision, and she made a mental note to check on the spell later. Maybe it helped with seeing underwater too. Sinister’s red robes floated around her like blood pooling in the water.

For a split second, Murmur was certain she’d been injured, hurt…but then she realized Sinister was flailing in the water, using her hands to summon blood bombs even as she stabbed at the damn tentacle that was trying to drag her to the bottom. Anger creased her brow, and her tiny, sharp dark elf teeth flashed in the strange distorted water light. Sinister was pissed.

A brief brush of her friend’s status and Murmur realized she’d already cast the water breathing spell on herself. Snowy